About the project – BITUP
BITUP is a parent communication intervention aimed at improving pupils’ school attendance, delivered by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT).
The programme involves updating parents/carers on the number of days of school their child has missed over a 6 – 8 week period (half term) via personalised text messages. BIT shares the template messages with schools and identifies pupils with below 95% attendance in the previous half term. After reviewing the list of pupil names to ensure it is appropriate for those parents to receive the text messages, the school sends the tailored messages out. This is repeated every half term and will take approximately two hours of administrative staff work each time. To prepare for sending out the messages, online guidance will be shared with schools.
BITUP is designed to be delivered to all pupils in years 7 – 11. All state funded mainstream secondary schools in England could be eligible for this programme – BIT will check whether each schools’ current attendance practices mean they can take part.
About the round
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Themed grant round
Grant:A safe, positive place to learn: improving attendance and reducing exclusions
We’ve come together with the Education Endowment Foundation to jointly fund a grant round to build evidence of what works to improve attendance and reduce exclusions.
Register your interest
Schools/settings can register their interest to take part in this project below, or go directly to BITUP’s website to find out more and sign up.