Belonging first.
Attendance follows.
Belongio puts how children feel about belonging alongside their attendance and behaviour, so staff know who to check in with on Monday, and why.
Children come to school when they feel they belong.
In our experience the pupils who stop coming are usually the ones who stopped feeling known first. Belongio starts with belonging and works along the whole chain, from a child feeling they belong to the results a school wants.
pupils in England do not feel they belong at school. 63% agree they belong; the rest do not.
Strongly disagreeing that you belong is associated with about 8 Attainment 8 points lower, roughly a GCSE grade across eight subjects, after prior attainment, disadvantage and SEN are taken into account.
By then every school is expected to monitor pupils' sense of belonging and engagement. Around six in ten say they already do something.
Source: Department for Education, School belonging and attainment at key stage 4 (August 2026) and the Schools White Paper (2026).
Attendance is measured. Belonging is next.
What schools in England are required to track today, and what is coming by 2029.
- By law: the attendance register, taken at the same time for every pupil in each session, the national codes, and daily attendance data shared with the DfE.
- Under statutory guidance: persistent absence (below 90%) and severe absence (below 50%) identified early; attendance analysed by cohort, including disadvantaged pupils, SEN, children with a social worker and young carers; benchmarked against national figures and similar schools; support before sanctions, with the trail to show it.
- From September 2026: an individual improvement expectation for every mainstream school, and attendance and behaviour reported on as its own area by Ofsted.
- By 2029: every school expected to monitor pupils' sense of belonging and engagement. The national Pupil Engagement Framework that will set out how is now expected before the end of the 2026/27 school year.
Belongio asks the same belonging question the DfE used in its national study, so what a school collects now will still count when the Framework publishes.
What schools must track on attendance, and what is coming on belonging.
Read the full DfE guideNotice earlier. Support first.
Belongio sits alongside the school's existing systems. Nothing new to key in, and no ranking of children.
See belonging, not just absence
Each term, pupils say how far they feel they belong. Belongio shows that answer as its own measure, next to attendance and behaviour, not folded into the attendance figure. Staff see the pupils whose pattern has changed before it becomes persistent absence.
Know who to check in with on Monday
Tutors and pastoral leads get a short list of pupils to find, with the reason on the same screen. The first move is a conversation, not a letter. That is the support-first approach set out in the DfE's Working Together to Improve School Attendance, with enforcement always the last resort.
One school or a whole trust
Senior leaders see their school. Trust leaders see every school on one page and get the weekly attendance report produced automatically, instead of built by hand each Friday.
Four things, from the first term.
- A termly measure of reported belonging, shown next to attendance and behaviour.
- A Monday-morning list of who to check in with, and why.
- The weekly trust attendance report, produced automatically.
- Support-first throughout, in line with DfE guidance.
Built to tell you who to talk to, and why.
Most attendance tools tell you what happened. Belongio puts belonging next to attendance, points staff at the right pupils, and gives a trust its weekly picture without anyone building it by hand. Works alongside any belonging audit or survey you already run.
Belonging Pulse
A senior leader's home page: belonging and attendance side by side, the gaps between groups (SEN, disadvantage, gender) and which way each is moving.
Early alerts, with the reason
Rules a school can read, not a black box. Every alert says what changed, since when, and what is worth trying, so a tutor can act on Monday morning without opening a spreadsheet.
Support that leaves a trail
Check-ins, conversations, letters and interventions logged against the pupil as they happen. That is the evidence Working Together asks a school to show, kept without extra admin.
Cohort analysis
Attendance, punctuality and belonging by year group, SEN, disadvantage and gender, with national figures alongside. The questions a governor or an inspector asks, answered before they are asked.
The trust view
Every school on one page for trust leaders, and the weekly trust attendance report produced automatically: the figures, the colours, the notes drafted and a download in the trust's own layout. The job that takes someone a morning each week, done in minutes and the same way every time.
Nothing new to key in
Attendance and behaviour come from the school's management information system through the integration route schools already use. Access is by role, and every action is logged. Belongio holds no more about a pupil than a school already does.
Comparing tools? Here is what to ask any of them, with our answers.
Ten questions to ask about your pupils' dataBuilt by people who know schools, and people who know software.
Belongio is designed with serving school leaders, who see every week which children are drifting, and built by engineers with decades of experience delivering enterprise software where sensitive data has to be handled properly. We started it because the children who stop coming to school are usually the ones who stopped feeling they belonged first. Belongio Ltd is registered in England and Wales.
We will soon be onboarding a first group of schools and trusts, first come, first served. If belonging-led attendance is your kind of thinking, register your interest below.
Register your interest.
We will soon be onboarding a first group of schools and trusts. Register your interest, ask for a demo, or get our monthly update.
Prefer email? hello@belongio.co.uk