School attendance targets in Powys will be met or bettered during this academic year, a senior councillor has vowed, after notices were sent out to parents over pupil absence.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Cabinet on 23 September, senior councillors received a report on the Corporate and Strategic Equality Plan Scorecard as it stood at the end of June.

This document shows how the council is performing across 122 different measures and shows whether they are: on track, off track on a quarterly basis, or will be reported on to a different time scale.

Education portfolio holder Cllr Pete Roberts brought up the targets for school attendance – which are almost all off track.

Cllr Roberts said: “The measure and targets that were set are very ambitious and focussed primarily on the current academic year, but this report is on figures from the previous academic year (April to end of June).”

“What we’re seeing are the historic figures before a lot the interventions that the service had planned had actually taken place, and a number of measures are only just being missed.”

Cllr Roberts continued: “Since then we have made attendance one of our priorities.

“There have been notices sent out to parents highlighting the importance of children attending and highlighting what would not be seen as acceptable reasons for their absence.”

Cllr Roberts said that “early and hopeful evidence” had come from a couple of high schools which saw an improvement for the first two weeks of the new school term which they: “need to sustain.”

Cllr Roberts said: “So while all those measures are off track at this point due to position we are, the mitigations are in place, and we expect them to come either back on track or exceed the target in this academic year.”