Attendance
Absence and Lateness
Good attendance and punctuality are essential to children’s success at school. If days are regularly missed, then continuity of learning and progress are significantly hampered as children find it difficult to catch up with missed work.
Good attendance is important because pupils:
get on better with learning and other children;
cope better with school routines, work and friendships;
find learning easier because they do not miss out;
are more successful moving between primary school, secondary school, higher education and employment or training;
are known to be safe and well by us.
Research shows a direct link between high attendance and doing well at school.
We encourage regular and punctual attendance in the following ways:
providing a caring, nurturing and welcoming learning environment
responding promptly to a child's and/or parent's concerns relating to events in school
marking registers accurately and punctually during morning and afternoon registration
celebrating and rewarding good attendance
monitoring pupil attendance, informing parents/carers of irregular attendance and offering support to improve attendance
Our expectations:
All children should arrive by 8.45 am and be appropriately prepared for the day. Children enter school at 8.50 am and registers are taken. Continued lateness will be followed up by the headteacher.
Absences through illness should be reported to the school office by 9.00 am on the day. Parents/carers should phone in on each day of an absence (unless the child is in hospital).
Health appointments should be made out of school hours whenever possible.
Holidays are not to be taken in term time – we are unable to authorise holiday absence even if your child has excellent attendance. Any absence for holidays will be unauthorised and if the attendance falls below an acceptable level may incur fines.
A leave of absence in term time can only be authorised in exceptional circumstances.
If you take the decision to take an unauthorised leave of absence during term time please fill in an application for leave of absence which is available from the school office.
Attendance is monitored on a weekly basis. Where attendance has fallen below 95% parents will receive a letter notifying them of their child’s attendance level and reminding them of the necessity of attending school on a regular basis. Where a pattern of non-attendance is emerging the parent/carer is invited to visit school to work with school staff to help resolve the difficulties.