Attendance Matters!

Having good attendance at school is vitally important for all children. Every day there is new and repeated learning and if children miss this learning either in blocks of absence of patterns of occasional days off, then it is hard for them to catch up. Poor attendance is linked to poor progress and means that children will lose confidence and not achieve their full potential.

Sometimes children are too ill to come to school, especially if they have a high temperature, sickness or diarrhoea. When this happens, we ask that all Parents ring school and let us know so that we know where your child is. Keep in touch and absences can be recorded properly. 

The Government expects schools to review every child's attendance at school. We do this each half term. 

The expectation for good attendance is attendance over 96%. 

We look at each child's attendance and colour code them like this:

100% EXCELLENT attendance

• 100-96% - GREEN GREAT ATTENDANCE, above or meeting our target
• 95.9-93% + = AMBER  needs improvement 
• 92.9 - 90%= AMBER - at risk of being persistently absent 
• 90% or below = RED Child is persistently absent.
• Attendance at this level will mean that school will take steps to work with parents to improve attendance
• 60% or lower  = Severely Persistently Absent - Attendance at this level could trigger a school and multi-agency intervention

School will always work in a supportive way with parents, recognising that there might be many reasons why attendance needs improving. Issues can include ongoing health conditions, mental health and well being of child or parent, distance to travel or lack of family support. Sometimes the issue may lie in friendship issues or a misunderstanding that when discussed, can be resolved. Our Family Welfare Lead can offer support and we can always provide signposting to Early Help services or on to other support services. 

Working together, we can ALWAYS improve attendance. 

A few things to note:

• Holidays will NOT be authorised
• Only leave under exceptional circumstances will be authorised
• If there are patterns of occasional days off with no real reasons given, if your child's attendance dips below 92% then we will NOT authorise absences 
• If a child has more than 10 Unauthorised absences this will automatically be sent to the Local Authority and they may decide to issue a Penalty Notice and then a Penalty Fine (please see link below)
• If fines are unpaid and attendance does not improve then a further fine may be added or legal action can be taken against parents, ultimately resulting in a caution or a custodial sentence

ARTICLE 28: ALL CHILDREN HAVE THE RIGHT TO AN EDUCATION AND TO GO TO SCHOOL