Attendance Improvement Plan (AIP) Templates and Worked Examples
Every blank attendance improvement plan on the internet has the same four headings and no content. The hard parts are the ones the blank form leaves to you: setting a goal that is arithmetically reachable, choosing interventions that match the actual barrier, and deciding in advance what closes the plan.
| Current position | Days used | Days remaining | Perfect attendance from here gives | Realistic 6-week goal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 absent of 41 days (October) | 41 | 139 | 90.0% | Miss no more than 2 in 30 |
| 18 absent of 41 days, misses 1 a fortnight | 41 | 139 | 86.1% | Same, sustained |
| 25 absent of 90 days (January) | 90 | 90 | 86.1% | Miss no more than 3 in 30 |
| 32 absent of 120 days (March) | 120 | 60 | 82.2% | Miss no more than 2 in 30 |
| 45 absent of 140 days (April) | 140 | 40 | 75.0% | Protect credit, not the rate |
| 8 absent of 30 days (September) | 30 | 150 | 95.6% | Miss no more than 1 in 30 |
Assumes a 180-day calendar. The fourth and fifth rows are the point: a student at 32 absences in March cannot reach 90% even with perfect attendance for the rest of the year, so a plan that sets 90% as its goal has failed on arithmetic before the meeting ends. Past a certain date the honest goal stops being a percentage and becomes credit protection and a clean start next year.
A worked example, start to finish
The case. Grade 7 student. On 28 October, 18 absences in 41 enrolled days — 43.9% absent, 56.1% attendance. Eleven absences unexcused, seven with notes. Two prior same-day messages, one letter, no conference held.
Step 1 — check the count. The clerk reruns it against enrolled days rather than calendar days. Confirmed: 41 enrolled, 18 absent. Two of the seven excused days were a documented hospital stay.
Step 2 — conference, 4 November. Attended by the parent, the student, the assistant principal and the counsellor. What comes out: the family moved in September, the new address is not on the original bus route, and the parent's shift starts at 06:30 three days a week. The student has been getting themself to school on those three days and frequently does not.
Step 3 — the goal. 139 days remain. Perfect attendance from here gives 90.0% for the year, which is not going to happen. The plan sets a six-week goal instead: no more than two absences in the next 30 school days, which if sustained lands the year around 85%.
Step 4 — interventions matched to the actual barrier. Transport is the barrier on three days a week, so: a bus stop reassignment request filed the same day; a breakfast-club place held from 07:15 on the three shift mornings; a morning check-in with a named adult at the door; and one weekly text to the parent with the running count. Nothing about motivation, because motivation was not the finding.
Step 5 — monitoring. Weeks 1–2: one absence. Bus reassignment approved on day 9. Weeks 3–4: zero absences. Weeks 5–6: one absence, documented illness. Total: two in 30, goal met.
Step 6 — closure, 16 December. Plan closed as met. Year-to-date attendance 74.6% and rising. The student remains chronically absent for state reporting purposes and will for the rest of the year — that is arithmetic and the plan should say so rather than claim a win it did not get. Monitoring continues fortnightly at tier 1.
The instructive part is step 2. Eighteen absences looked like disengagement on the report and was a bus route. No amount of letter-writing would have found that.
An intervention menu, tagged by barrier
Choose from the row that matches the barrier you actually found, not from the top of the list.
- Transport: bus stop reassignment, route timing review, transport for a student in temporary housing, a walking-buddy arrangement, a late-bus pass, a fare card.
- Health: a 504 referral, a school-nurse care plan, an asthma action plan on file, a dental or vision referral, a standing medical documentation arrangement, homebound instruction for an extended episode.
- Housing and material need: McKinney-Vento liaison referral, school-of-origin transport, uniform or clothing support, a laundry arrangement, a food-pantry referral.
- School-based: a named check-in adult, a schedule change away from a problem period, a mentor, a safety plan where bullying is a factor, a re-entry meeting after a suspension, a credit-recovery place.
- Family logistics: a breakfast-club place, an early-drop arrangement, sibling drop-off co-ordination, a text reminder the night before, a call from a named adult on the mornings that are hardest.
- Engagement: a club or activity tied to a fixed morning, an attendance buddy, a goal chart the student owns, recognition when the rate moves.
Tag each one you select with who owns it and what it costs in staff time. A plan with six interventions and no named owner is a plan with zero interventions.
What your state may call this document
The generic AIP maps onto differently-named state instruments, and matching the name matters when the file is reviewed. We are confident of two of these and flag the rest for you to confirm.
- Ohio — absence intervention plan. Ohio's framework, established by House Bill 410, requires an absence intervention team and a written plan on a defined timeline once a student is habitually truant. Confidence: reasonably high on the existence and shape of the requirement; confirm the current day-counts and hour thresholds with the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce before you rely on them.
- Pennsylvania — School Attendance Improvement Conference and Plan. Pennsylvania's Act 138 of 2016 restructured truancy around a conference and a written improvement plan before referral. Confidence: reasonably high on the structure; confirm the current thresholds with PDE.
- Virginia, Tennessee, Washington and others operate analogous named instruments — attendance plans, progressive truancy interventions, engagement agreements. We have not verified the current statutory names or contents for these and are not going to print them from memory. Ask your state education agency for the current form name and required elements, then relabel the sections below to match.
The generic section set that relabels cleanly onto all of them: identifying information; the attendance data with its denominator; the barriers identified and how; the goal with its date; the interventions with owners; the district's own commitments; the monitoring schedule; the closure decision; and the signatures with capacity noted.
Retention. An AIP contains barrier information — housing, health, family circumstance — that is more sensitive than an attendance record. Decide where it lives and how long it is kept before you write the first one. Kastr publishes retention defaults per record class rather than leaving it implicit, though we will also say plainly that our retention configuration is a published policy rather than an automated purge job today.
Questions people actually ask
What goes into an attendance improvement plan?
Identifying information, the attendance data with its denominator stated, the barriers actually identified and how, a dated and reachable goal, the interventions with named owners, the district's own commitments, a monitoring schedule, a closure decision, and signatures. The two most often missing are the district's commitments and the closure decision.
How long should an attendance improvement plan run?
Six to eight weeks with fortnightly checks. Long enough to see a pattern, short enough that the review actually happens. Plans that run to the end of the school year are almost never reviewed and produce no evidence of intervention when it is needed.
What is the difference between an attendance contract and an attendance improvement plan?
A contract is an agreement about behaviour, signed by the family. A plan is the district's account of what it will do — the barriers found, the interventions selected, who owns each, and how progress will be measured. Many districts run both in one meeting; if you run only one, run the plan, because it is the one that shows the district did something.
Is an attendance improvement plan required before a truancy referral?
In several states some form of documented intervention or conference is a statutory precondition, and Ohio and Pennsylvania both structure this explicitly. Whether a written plan specifically is required, and what it must contain, is state-specific — confirm the current requirement with your state education agency rather than assuming the generic form satisfies it.
What attendance goal should the plan set?
One that is reachable given the days remaining. Work out the best possible year-end rate assuming perfect attendance from today; if that is already below your target, the target is wrong. Past midyear the honest goal is usually a short-window absence cap plus credit protection, not a percentage.
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