Supporting School Attendance with Scott Norman-Stephenson

As teachers, we can work all the magic we like, but if a pupil’s not in our classroom, there’s not much impact to be had. In the wake of Covid, there are more and more pupils who are missing significant amounts of the school year. Somehow, we’ve got to season 9 without having an episode specifically about this important issue, but today we’ve managed to find a guest who can help with the details.

Scott Norman-Stephenson supports attendance for a cluster of primary schools in Cardiff, and he’s with us to discuss something that can often, in the media, be reduced to simple headlines about an ‘attendance crisis’ or descend into finger-pointing at parents. Scott tells us about what supporting attendance looks like on the ground, the kinds of strategies he uses, some of the underlying issues feeding into the problem, and why he’s definitely not like a traffic warden!

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Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 11th August 2026