Parents have a legal responsibility to make sure their child is in school every day and arrives on time. Good habits in terms of attending school and being on time are both crucial to ensuring a positive attitude towards school. Children who arrive late miss the sense of belonging that comes with being part of the routines at the start of the day.
If your child is absent, please inform the school on each day of absence. You will be asked to give a reason for their absence. We consider absences to be authorised if your child is sick.
However absences for birthdays or shopping trips will be recorded as unauthorised. The school is obliged to keep a record of absences and these are recorded on your child’s report.
Unauthorised absence and persistent lateness will be reported to the local authority’s Attendance and Welfare Officer.
Parents are requested not to organise holidays during term time as it disrupts your child’s learning. Children attend school for only 190 days a year and the rest of the year is available for holidays. In very exceptional circumstances the Headteacher may authorise a limited absence. Parents should request this in writing explaining why the holiday can only take place in term time.
Attendance and latecoming procedures
As part of our policy for safeguarding pupils we would like to ensure that our procedures for informing the school of a child’s absence are quite clear to everyone. We would appreciate if all parents and carers could ensure they follow the points below when alerting the school of their child being absent:
- Please call the school on each day of your child’s absence.
- If a pupil has an appointment please either call, email the school or write to the class teacher prior to the appointment taking place.
- Pupils will be marked late for school after 9.10am. Late coming of pupils will be closely monitored and parents contacted where there are concerns.
- If your child is not in school and we have not been notified as to why, then the school will call parents to find out where the pupil is.
- If parents are not contactable then the office staff will pursue the child’s absence via emergency contacts.
- If no contact can be made with the absent pupil’s parents/ carers or emergency contacts, the Attendance Officer will be requested to attend to investigate the absence. This should happen within the first school day of absence.
- We review pupil attendance on a monthly basis. When your child’s attendance drops below 95% we will into account the odd day off for illness.
- When your child’s attendance drops to nearer 90% we will write to you again and remind you that if it continues to drop below 90% we will need to start monitoring your child’s attendance on a regular basis, as we are obliged to refer children and families to the Attendance Officer when attendance gets to 85%.
- If we are referring your child you will be informed about this and the Attendance Officer will make contact with you to discuss the way forward.
- Parents should remember that in an extreme case the attendance service will take parents to court and enforce a Parenting Order.
Requesting leave during term time
This is something that as a school we actively discourage. All education from Reception class to Year 6 is statutory and pupils must attend every day. If we have ongoing concerns about attendance of pupils in our nursery class then this may result in the place being withdrawn.
We continue to be concerned about the number of parents who view the 10 days that we are allowed to authorise as an entitlement i.e. I’ve used 3 days so I’ve got 7 left! All requests for time off in exceptional circumstances will be considered alongside a pupil’s current attendance figure as well as their academic progress in school i.e. if the request will further lower their overall attendance figure of adversely affect their progress then the request will not be authorised.
In order to ensure that parents are clear that term time holidays are something we don’t view as being a good idea and detrimental to children’s learning and progress, all requests for time off school will result in a meeting or telephone call with the Headteacher or Deputy Head before they will be authorised. We must have 2 weeks notice of a request for absence. Please do not book the holiday and then request authorisation. We will not authorise such requests.
Please continue to complete an application form for time off at the main school office. This will then be processed and an appointment arranged to discuss it.
