The complete guide to attendance tracking in alternative provision

A pupil in alternative provision is often there because school stopped working for them. That makes every session they turn up for count, and every session they miss a question someone needs to answer the same day.

Attendance tracking in alternative provision means recording every session a pupil is expected, the reason for any absence, and hours attended against the hours they are funded for, then sharing that promptly with the commissioning school or local authority. Done well, it protects children, satisfies commissioners and shows early when a placement is slipping.

This guide covers what to record, how the rules in England and Wales apply to AP, how to report hours against entitlement, and a weekly routine you can use from Monday.

Why does attendance matter so much in alternative provision?

In a mainstream school, attendance is one measure among many. In AP it is often the measure: the thing commissioners ask about first, the thing that shows whether a placement is working, and one of the clearest safeguarding signals you have.

Commissioners need it to meet their own duties

When a school or local authority places a pupil with you, it stays responsible for that child. The DfE’s statutory guidance Keeping children safe in education says the commissioning school continues to be responsible for the pupil’s safeguarding, should always know where the child is during school hours, and should review placements at least half termly to make sure the child is regularly attending.

Your attendance records are how they do that. If your figures arrive late, patchy or in a different format every month, you make their job harder, and that affects whether they keep placing pupils with you.

Absence is a safeguarding warning sign

Keeping children safe in education is clear that being absent from education for prolonged periods or on repeat occasions can be a vital warning sign of neglect, child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation, including county lines. Many pupils in AP already have a social worker, are a Looked After Child or have a history of exclusion. For them, an unexplained absence is not an admin task. It is a welfare check.

It is the clearest evidence of progress

A pupil who arrives at your setting attending 30% of the time and is attending 75% by Easter has made real progress, even before you look at qualifications. Good records let you show that.

What should an AP provider record?

At a minimum, record the following for every pupil, for every session they are timetabled to attend:

• Present or absent. The basic mark, taken at the start of the session.
• Lateness. Whether they arrived late, and roughly when. Repeated lateness is a pattern worth spotting.
• Absence reason. Chosen from a fixed list, not typed freehand (more on this below).
• Notes. Who called, what was said, what action was taken. “Mum called 9:10, pupil has a dentist appointment, back at 11” is far more useful than “authorised”.
• Who took the register and when. So you can answer questions later.

On the pupil’s record, you also need the context that makes attendance data meaningful: the commissioning school or local authority, the referring agency, the pupil’s entitled or funded hours, and up-to-date contact details for parents and carers (ideally more than one emergency contact, which the DfE describes as good practice).

Whole-day or lesson-level marking?

Schools in England must take the register at the start of each morning session and once during each afternoon session. Many AP providers go further and record every timetabled lesson or activity, because:

• pupils often attend part days, or split time between sites
• a pupil may arrive for the morning and leave before the afternoon activity
• commissioners increasingly ask for hours attended, not just days

Lesson-level recording shows patterns that a whole-day mark hides, such as a pupil who always leaves before maths, or never makes the Friday afternoon session. When a pupil is off all day, though, you should be able to mark the whole day in one go rather than lesson by lesson.

How do you report attendance against entitled hours?

Most commissioners fund AP placements by the hour or by the session. The number of hours a pupil is funded and expected to attend is often called their entitled hours. Reporting attendance as a percentage of those hours is the fairest and clearest way to show what happened.

A worked example

Jordan is in Year 10 and placed with your centre by his school for 15 hours a week: three mornings of five hours each.

In week 2, Jordan attended 12 of his 15 entitled hours: 12 ÷ 15 = 80%. On its own that might be a one-off, such as a medical appointment. By week 3 it is a trend, and the conversation with his school should already have happened.

A few principles make these figures trustworthy:

• Use the hours the pupil was timetabled for, not the hours your centre is open.
• Count part attendance honestly. If a pupil arrives an hour late to a five-hour session, that is four hours attended.
• Keep reasons alongside the numbers. A commissioner will read 80% differently if the missing three hours were a hospital appointment rather than an unexplained absence.
• Report on a consistent period, such as weekly, half-termly or by month across the school year (September to August), so figures can be compared.

How should you handle absence reasons across centres?

If you run more than one site, or even one busy centre with several staff taking registers, inconsistent absence reasons are the most common reason attendance data becomes unreliable. One member of staff writes “ill”, another “sick”, another “unwell – mum rang”, and suddenly your report shows three categories for one reason.

The fix is simple:

1. Agree one list of absence reasons and use it everywhere. Keep it short, perhaps 8 to 12 options.
2. Align it with what your commissioners need. If schools will record the absence under a particular code, make your reasons easy to translate, for example illness, medical appointment, unauthorised, excluded or suspended, transport failure, and reason not yet known.
3. Always include “reason not yet known”. It keeps the absence visible until someone finds out why, and should be updated as soon as you know.
4. Put the detail in the notes, not the reason.
5. Review the list once a year and retire options nobody uses.

What does the law say about attendance in AP in England?

This is where AP gets confusing, because the rules depend on what kind of setting you are.

The core guidance: Working together to improve school attendance

The DfE’s Working together to improve school attendance is statutory guidance for maintained schools, academies, independent schools and local authorities. The current edition was published in July 2026. It lists alternative provision providers among the people it is written for, and it sets out what schools must record in their attendance and admission registers.

Key points that affect AP:

• Persistent absence is missing 10% or more of school, equivalent to one day or more a fortnight across a full school year. Schools and local authorities are expected to put targeted support in place. See our glossary entry on persistent absence.
• Severe absence is missing 50% or more. The guidance says this group should be the top priority for support across all partners.
• Day-to-day processes should include contacting parents on the first day of absence where no reason has been given, and making further contact if absence continues without explanation.
• Unexplained absences should have the correct code entered as soon as the reason is known, and no later than five working days after the session.

Registered and unregistered AP are treated differently

If you are a registered school (a pupil referral unit, AP academy or free school, or a registered independent school), you keep your own statutory attendance register and use the national attendance codes. Where a pupil is dual registered with their home school, the guidance explains how both schools use code D for sessions the pupil is due at the other school, and that the school the pupil was due to attend records the attendance or absence.

If you are unregistered (non-school) AP, you do not keep a statutory register yourself. The commissioning school does, and it records the pupil’s time with you under one of two codes:

• Code K is used when the local authority has arranged the provision, for example under section 19 of the Education Act 1996. The guidance gives “attending unregistered alternative provision” as an example.
• Code B is used for other approved educational activity arranged by the school, including “attending unregistered alternative provision arranged by the school”.

For both codes, the guidance says schools should have arrangements in place for the provider to notify them of any absence, and the school must then record that absence using the relevant absence code. In other words, the school’s register is only as accurate as the information you send.

The voluntary national standards for non-school AP

In August 2025 the DfE published voluntary national standards for non-school alternative provision. The government has said it intends to make standards mandatory when parliamentary time allows, so check the current guidance. Standard 3.4 says providers should:

• record attendance or absence for each session
• report it to commissioners as soon as possible, ideally within 30 minutes of the start of the session
• follow up absences urgently, with agreements in place about who is best placed to act
• discuss attendance with commissioners at least every six weeks

The DfE’s statutory guidance Arranging alternative provision, updated in February 2025, also expects commissioners to have arrangements for absence to be followed up promptly and for unregistered providers to notify them of any absence.

Part-time timetables

Many AP pupils attend part time. Working together to improve school attendance says every pupil of compulsory school age is entitled to a full-time education, and that part-time timetables should only be used in very exceptional circumstances, be temporary, have regular reviews and a proposed end date, and never be used to manage behaviour. If a pupil’s hours with you are part of a part-time arrangement, it helps to know the review date and record attendance clearly so the review has good evidence.

What about Wales?

In Wales, schools use the Welsh Government’s own attendance codes under the Education (Pupil Registration) (Wales) Regulations 2010. The school attendance codes guidance, updated in July 2026, says schools should have arrangements in place so that any provider delivering off-site provision can notify them twice daily, in line with registration periods, of each pupil’s attendance or absence. It also expects schools to follow up unexplained and unexpected absence in a timely manner, for example through first day response procedures.

The Welsh Government’s wider attendance guidance, Belonging, engaging and participating, treats missing 10% or more of sessions as persistent absence. Welsh terminology differs too: you will hear EOTAS (education other than at school) rather than AP, and ALN (additional learning needs) rather than SEN. Guidance in Wales is under active review, so check the current Welsh Government pages before relying on any detail.

Why is first-day calling so important?

First-day calling means contacting a pupil’s parent or carer on the first day of an unexplained absence, not waiting to see if they turn up tomorrow. It is expected of schools in England, and the voluntary standards expect urgent follow-up from AP providers too.

A good first-day routine:

1. Take the register promptly at the start of each session.
2. Check absences against messages received. Has a parent already called or emailed?
3. Agree with each commissioner who calls. Some schools want to make the call themselves; others want you to. Write it down.
4. Call the parent or carer, then the second emergency contact if needed.
5. Contact other professionals where agreed, for example the social worker for a Looked After Child, or the youth justice worker.
6. Record what happened in the notes, including failed calls.
7. Tell the commissioner the outcome.
8. Escalate to your designated safeguarding lead if you cannot establish where the child is, or if anything worries you.

How should you report to schools and local authorities?

Commissioners usually want two kinds of information: same-day notice of absence, and regular summaries.

Same-day notice should say who was absent, the reason if known, and what you have done. Keep it short, factual and prompt.

Regular summaries, weekly, half termly or monthly, should include:

• entitled hours, hours attended and the percentage for each pupil
• absence reasons, so authorised and unexplained absence can be told apart
• lateness patterns
• a short comment on anything notable, such as a pupil who has started attending more

Send each commissioner only their own pupils. A local authority does not need to see another authority’s pupils, and a school should only see its own.

How can you spot patterns early?

Weekly percentages are useful, but patterns are where you catch problems before they become persistent absence. Look for:

• Day-of-week patterns: always absent on Mondays or Fridays.
• Lesson patterns: attends the morning but not the afternoon, or avoids a particular subject or site.
• Drifting lateness: arriving 10 minutes late, then 20, then not at all.
• A sudden drop in a pupil who had been attending well. This is often the most important signal.
• Reasons that repeat: frequent “illness” with no medical follow-up, or repeated transport failures.
• Cohort patterns: is attendance lower at one site, or for pupils from one referrer?

A monthly view across the school year makes it easy to see whether a pupil is improving or declining, and to show that to a commissioner.

A practical weekly attendance routine

Here is a routine a small AP centre can run without a dedicated attendance officer.

Every session

• Take the register within the first few minutes.
• Chase unexplained absences straight away and record notes.
• Notify commissioners of absence as agreed, ideally within 30 minutes.

Every day, before staff go home

• Check every register for the day is complete.
• Update any “reason not yet known” absences where you now know the reason.
• Pass any safeguarding concerns to your designated safeguarding lead.

Every week

• Run hours attended against entitled hours for each pupil.
• List anyone below 90% and anyone whose attendance has dropped sharply.
• Agree an action for each: call home, meeting, discuss with commissioner.
• Send weekly summaries to commissioners who want them.

Every half term

• Review each pupil’s trend with their commissioner, as placement reviews should happen at least half termly.
• Check your absence reason list is being used consistently.
• Check contact details, medical information and transport arrangements are still correct.

How PupilDB helps

PupilDB builds each day’s registers straight from your weekly timetable, across all your centres, so staff simply mark who is present, add a reason from your own absence list and write notes, or mark a whole day in one go. Reminder emails nudge staff when a register has not been finished. Each pupil record holds their local authority, referring agency and entitled hours, alongside parent and carer contacts, taxi details and Looked After Child status. The reports show attendance against entitled hours and attendance percentage by month from September to August, with a CSV export you can send to commissioners. Each placement holds the commissioner’s targets and six-weekly reviews, with a printable summary for your termly meeting, and the daily log sends each pupil’s day to their school once a lead has checked it. PupilDB does not use the statutory attendance codes yet, though they are on our roadmap. You can see the full registers and attendance feature or read more about how PupilDB works for alternative provision.

If you would like to see how this would work for your setting, book a demo.