What is the EWS?

Every child matters

Education Welfare Service

The Education Welfare Service (EWS) acts on behalf of the local authority in enforcing a parent's duty to ensure their child receives an appropriate education; it also discharges the authority's responsibility to monitor and issue child employment and entertainment licences for school age children.

Context

By law, all children of compulsory school age (between 5 and 16) must receive an appropriate full-time education. Parents are responsible for making this happen, either by registering the child at school or by making other arrangements.

If a child is registered at school, parents have the primary responsibility for ensuring that their child attends regularly. Local authorities have a duty to ensure that parents fulfil this responsibility. This duty is usually carried out by the EWS.

On average, 450,000 children are absent from school every day; this includes around 50,000 unauthorised absences. The government sees reducing absence from school as a priority because of the strong link between attendance and attainment, and also because of the links between truancy, street crime and anti-social behaviour.

Promoting regular school attendance is a key component in the government's strategy to raise educational standards.

Who is in it?

The EWS is made up of teams of education welfare officers (EWOs).

What do they do?

The EWS is probably the longest established welfare service in Britain. Though enforcing school attendance is the main responsibility of the EWS, in many instances they will also undertake other important related duties. These include:

• Regulating child employment
• Advising on child protection issues
• Advising on children being educated otherwise than at school

In enforcing attendance, EWOs have a variety of powers to help them ensure that children are properly educated:

• School Attendance Orders
• Fast Track to Attendance
• Parenting Contracts
• Penalty Notices
• Education Supervision Orders
• Prosecution
• Parenting Orders

However, EWOs work closely with schools and families to resolve attendance issues. They support children and families when pupils are experiencing difficulties in school or welfare issues are disrupting their education.

EWOs will investigate the reasons behind school absence, and can advise families about specialist support services and make referrals to appropriate services. As well as addressing individual problems, they also provide advice and support to schools on promoting whole school attendance.

Schools have a named EWO who supports the school in addressing attendance issues relating to its pupils. They develop close relationships with the schools they support, and check school registers regularly to ensure that they are being completed in accordance with the school's policy and national regulations. They also support schools to identify any patterns of absence that may identify more significant issues.

How do you access the service?

The initial responsibility for identifying and resolving attendance problems rests with schools. However, where they are unable to improve a pupil's attendance they will refer the pupil to the EWS. Schools are likely to refer a case to the EWS if:

• A pattern of irregular attendance is continuing or getting worse
• If parents are refusing to discuss with the school ways of improving a child's attendance or will not accept their responsibility for ensuring the child attends school
• If parents are asking for excessive amounts of authorised absence

If you are a concerned parent or have some questions about school attendance, please contact your Education Welfare Area Officer.

This page was last reviewed 1 May 2013 at 10:36.
The page is next due for review 28 October 2014.