Trust Attendance Improvement Lead

Salary: £82,654.00 to £91,158.00 per annum

Closing Date: 20/05/2026

Contract Type: All Year Round

Contract Term: Permanent

Phase/Establishment Type: Star Central

Hours Per Week: 37 hours per week

Location: Regular travel across all Star schools

Are you a strategic attendance leader ready to shape practice at scale? This is a rare and exciting opportunity for an experienced attendance professional to lead trust-wide attendance strategy, quality assurance and improvement across Star Academies, one of the highest-performing multi-academy trusts in the country.

As Trust-wide Attendance Lead, you will provide strategic leadership, expert challenge and system oversight to secure sustained improvement in attendance, persistent absence and severe absence across all phases and regions. Working as part of the Central Inclusion and Attendance function, you will influence practice at every level, from board reporting and executive decision making to school-level leadership capacity and frontline systems.

This role is ideal for a leader with a deep understanding of statutory attendance frameworks, a strong moral purpose, and a proven ability to drive improvement through clarity, consistency and collaboration. It is very much a hands-on role, working directly with Senior Leaders and Attendance Leads in our school, balanced with keeping an oversight of attendance patterns and fidelity to the Star model in each school.

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 a highly experienced and credible Trust-wide Attendance Lead to provide system leadership and strategic oversight of attendance across our geographically diverse trust. You will bring:

• A strong track record of improving attendance outcomes at scale
• The confidence and credibility to challenge and support principals and senior leaders
• A rigorous, evidence-led approach balanced with empathy and inclusion
• Secure expertise in statutory compliance, safeguarding and equitable practice
• A commitment to reducing disadvantage and ensuring pupils with SEND receive the support they need to attend regularly

This role is less about direct delivery and more about setting direction, quality assuring impact, holding leaders to account and building sustainable capacity across the trust.

About the role: As Trust-wide Attendance Lead, you will:

• Set clear expectations for attendance leadership, systems, thresholds and intervention across all schools
• Use data intelligence, audit activity and QA processes to identify risk, variation and disproportionality
• Hold school leaders to account for attendance outcomes, agreeing and monitoring improvement actions
• Build attendance leadership capacity through coaching, professional development and challenge
• Ensure statutory compliance and high-quality practice in relation to persistent absence, severe absence, CME and EHE
• Act as the trust’s subject-matter expert for attendance, advising executive leaders, trustees and principals
• Ensure attendance practice is fully aligned with safeguarding, SEND, behaviour and inclusion systems, including Every Star Matters
• Lead trust-level engagement with local authorities and statutory partners
• Provide strategic oversight of legal and enforcement activity, ensuring proportionality and consistency
• Contribute to trust and board-level reporting, inspection preparation and wider system improvement work

The role requires flexibility to travel across trust schools and, where necessary, to work remotely or flexibly according to operational need.

You will have:

• Significant experience of leading attendance improvement across multiple schools or at system level
• Excellent understanding of DfE attendance guidance, statutory processes and best practice
• Strong data literacy, with the ability to translate insight into action
• The ability to challenge, influence and support senior leaders with credibility and care
• A child-centred, inclusive approach underpinned by high expectations
• The resilience and judgement to manage complex cases involving safeguarding, SEND and family vulnerability
• Full commitment to Star Academies’ vision, values and commitment to equity

About Star Academies: 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 STAR values 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, Star Talent Academy. 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. We can also offer you a range of rewards and benefits, including competitive salaries and pension schemes, generous holiday entitlements and healthcare cash plans.

Key Dates:

• Closing Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2026 at midnight.
• Interview Date: To be confirmed.
• Proposed Start Date: The successful candidate will be expected to start in September 2026.

Our Commitment: Star Academies is committed to safeguarding, safer recruitment and promoting the welfare of pupils. Our comprehensive recruitment and selection processes aim to discourage and screen out unsuitable applicants. Successful candidates are subject to rigorous pre-employment checks. We are equally committed to eliminating discrimination and encouraging diversity. We aim for our workforce to be representative of society and that each employee feels respected and able to give their best. We are committed to providing equality and fairness in our recruitment and employment practices and not to discriminate on any grounds. We oppose all forms of unlawful and unfair discrimination.