Assemblies for KS3/4 / Spring Term Assembly Plans / Attendance Assembly

Attendance Assembly

This assembly script, and its accompanying PowerPoint presentation, is to explore what a child’s life was like before compulsory education came into effect. Teachers will be able to draw on historical documents and quotes, and use visual stimulus, to convey the desired message to students.

The resource introduces the idea of the working child to students, and includes what kind of work such young children (younger than the students!) would be subject to prior to the Education Reforms. The assembly plan will encourage pupils to empathise with certain jobs, such as a chimney sweep, and will be told of how they were treated as well as having to work long, gruelling shifts.

After introducing looking at past issues, the assembly plan goes on to raise awareness of the current issue of truancy in schools. The teacher resource highlights that no matter how big a student may think a problem is, be it bullying or a problem at home, truanting is not the way to solve it. The PowerPoint presentation helps to emphasise certain points, such as who to talk to if you have a problem and have been truanting.

The whole assembly plan also looks at the broader impact of truancy on the society, as students losing out on education will not benefit their communities when they leave school. Punctuality and problems that can arise with constantly being late is also addressed in this teacher assembly resource.

By working an historical angle into the idea of the issue of truancy in schools today, this resource works well to engage students by not simply telling them truancy is wrong. By looking at the history of child workers, pupils are made aware of how lucky they are to be entitled to an education, and will think twice about truanting in the future.