The West Yorkshire Scientific Advisory Group (WYSAG) has released new video in it’s “WYSAG Talks” series which provide the chance to find out more from WYSAG experts about the big challenges facing us, what the science tells us and what we can do to together to build a healthier future in West Yorkshire.
In this latest WYSAG Talks video, Prof Mark Mon Williams describes an evidence-based approach to addressing the school absence crisis. School aged children school (aged 4-16 years) are identified as being a “persistent absentee” if they are recorded as having 90% attendance or less over the course of at least one academic year.
The release of this latest video is timely as it coincides with the release of the latest report published last week by Child of the North and Anne Longfield’s Centre for Young Lives think tank. The report puts forward new recommendations to tackle the school absence crisis. The report, co-authored by NIHR ARC Yorkshire & Humber researchers, highlights how vulnerable children and children from disadvantaged areas of the UK (such as the North of England) are at higher risk of not being in school, and calls on the new Government to focus its school absence strategy on earlier identification and intervention with children most at risk of persistent absence.
The report, “An evidence-based plan for improving school attendance”, is the tenth in a series of Child of the North/Centre for Young Lives reports to be published during 2024 to support the Government’s ambitious Opportunity Mission vision for children. The reports show how putting the interests and life chances of children at the heart of policy making and delivery is crucial to Britain’s future success.
Whilst we know how well NHS treatments work in improving health, most of our health and wellbeing is shaped by wider determinants: the quality of the houses and neighbourhoods we live in, the design of our urban environment, the air we breathe and the schools where we learn, our access to healthy food and active travel.
WYSAG wants to bring together available research to give independent evidence-based policy advice by mobilising, organising and utilising available research. The group will answer specific questions posed by the Combined Authority and Health and Care Partnership.
The WYSAG group serves the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, existing to guide policy makers to make the best decisions and shape a healthier, happier future for the people of West Yorkshire. WYSAG is hosted and facilitated by the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) Yorkshire and Humber, working in partnership with Yorkshire Universities and the Y-PERN network.
For more information on this topic, please see the paper in the link here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.240272
Find out more about WYSAG here https://arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk/research/projects/west-yorkshire-scientific-advisory-group-wysag/
The video is available on the YH ARC YouTube channel from today
