Attendance
We expect all of our children to attend school regularly – every day if possible. As a parent or carer, you have a legal requirement to ensure your child attends school on a regular basis. Therefore, you hold the responsibility to promote good attendance and punctuality. You can demonstrate your commitment to your child’s education by not allowing your child to miss school for anything other than an exceptional and unavoidable reason.
We do understand there are times when children will need to be absent from school for a number of reasons. As a result, we will only consider authorising absences in the following instances:
- For sickness or ill health
- For medical or dental appointments which fall during school hours (we would however encourage you to make appointments outside of school hours)
- For religious or cultural observances
- For a family emergency
We ask all parents and carers to follow our leave of absence procedure in order to grant authorised absence in the above cases.
You are required to contact the school as soon as possible on the first day of absence. Any parent or carer who has not reported their child as absent will be contacted by the school by phone call, text message or email. Failure to follow this procedure may result in the child receiving an unauthorised absence.
Research suggests that children who are absent from school may never catch up on the learning they have missed, which may ultimately affect exam and test results. When children are absent from school, they miss not only the teaching provided on the days when they are away, but are also less prepared for the lessons that follow which build on prior knowledge and teaching. As a parent/carer, you can demonstrate your commitment to your child’s education by not allowing your child to miss school for anything other than an exceptional and unavoidable reason.
Take a look at the information below to see what an impact being late or absent actually adds up to - it's quite alarming:
Lateness = Lost Learning
5 minutes late each day = over 3 days lost (over a school year)
10 minutes late each day = about 6.5 days lost
15 minutes late each day = about 10 days lost
20 minutes late each day = about 13 days lost
30 minutes late each day = about 19 days lost
Every School Day Counts
100% attendance = 190 school days
95% attendance = 180 school days = 2 weeks absence
90% attendance = 171 school days = 4 weeks absence
85% attendance = 161 school days = 6 weeks absence
80% attendance = 152 school days = more than a half-term lost
75% attendance = 143 school days = more than 9 weeks lost
Please support your child's education by ensuring they attend school on time each day.