Are you an experienced attendance professional ready to make a wider impact?
This is an exciting opportunity for a skilled practitioner with a strong history of improving attendance to work at a trust-wide level. You will combine excellent communication and relationship building skills with a child-centred, solution-focused approach and a secure understanding of statutory attendance frameworks.
About Star Central
Star Central, which is based at our head office in Blackburn, Lancashire, provides leadership, strategic direction and support to Star Academies, Star Talent Academy and our schools.
The Star Central team includes experts from a range of professional backgrounds, who work together to provide an outstanding support service to the Star community. We support our schools to provide educational and operational excellence and to cultivate a strong Star community, with the aim of nurturing today’s young people and inspiring tomorrow’s leaders.
Who we're looking for
Star Academies is seeking an experienced and highly motivated Attendance Improvement Lead to join our skilled and dedicated Central Attendance Team. This is a unique opportunity to play a pivotal role in improving attendance outcomes for pupils across our trust and to make a lasting difference to children and families.
Working closely with school leaders and attendance teams, you will lead and model best practice, provide intensive targeted support to designated schools and drive rapid, sustainable improvements in attendance. Drawing on Star’s highly effective trust-wide attendance strategy — which has delivered some of the strongest attendance outcomes nationally — you will support schools to reduce persistent and severe absence and ensure pupils are in school, on time and ready to learn.
The role will be primarily based within our West Midlands and Birmingham schools, though this may change in line with trust priorities and operational needs.
About the role
You will work in partnership with school leaders, attendance officers, safeguarding teams and external agencies to:
1. Adapt and implement trust-wide attendance policies and strategies to meet individual school contexts.
2. Analyse attendance data to identify patterns, trends and barriers to attendance.
3. Plan and deliver high-quality attendance interventions, including preventative and early-help work with pupils and families.
4. Provide coaching, training and professional guidance to school-based attendance teams.
5. Support schools with statutory processes, including penalty notices, prosecutions and education supervision orders where required.
6. Build strong relationships with families and partners to remove barriers and secure positive attendance outcomes.
You will also play a key role in promoting the vital link between attendance, attainment and wellbeing, ensuring schools maintain a consistent, solution-focused and compliant approach.
You will have:
7. A strong track record of improving attendance and reducing persistent and severe absence.
8. Excellent communication and relationship-building skills.
9. The confidence to lead, influence and support school leaders and teams.
10. A child-centred, solution-focused approach balanced with a strong understanding of statutory frameworks.
11. Flexibility to travel across trust schools and work remotely as required.
12. Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
13. Full commitment to our vision and values.
About Star Academies
is a high-performing multi-academy trust that runs more than 30 primary and secondary schools. We are a values-based organisation that works to improve the life chances of young people in areas of social and economic deprivation to help them succeed at the highest levels of education, employment and the professions. Every single day you’ll be rewarded with the opportunity to shape a young person’s future - our embody what we believe is needed to succeed.
Professional development is key to our ongoing success, so we continually invest in our employees through our professional development hub,. With a wealth of training, mentoring and progression opportunities across a large, growing group of academies, joining our team of leading education experts could propel your career to the next level.