Attendance
Regular and punctual attendance is vital to ensuring all children have full access to the learning opportunities in school. Valuable learning time is lost when children are absent or late. This disadvantages their progress. It can also cause the children to feel isolated from their peers as they do not have the same shared experiences.
Every day in every year of a child’s primary school education lays the foundation blocks for success.
Unplanned absence
The school must be notified of the reason for the absence on the first day of an unplanned absence by or as soon as practically possible by contacting the school.
We will mark absence due to physical or mental illness as authorised unless the school has a genuine concern about the authenticity of the illness.
Planned absence
Attending a medical or dental appointment will be counted as authorised as long as the school is notified in advance of the appointment.
However, we encourage medical and dental appointments to be made out of school hours where possible. Where this is not possible, the pupil should be out of school for the minimum amount of time necessary.
The pupil’s parent/carer must also apply for other types of term-time absence as far in advance as possible of the requested absence.
The headteacher will only grant a leave of absence to a pupil during term time if the request meets the specific circumstances set out in the 2024 school attendance regulations. These circumstances are:
- Taking part in a regulated performance, or regulated employment abroad
- Attending an interview
- Study leave
- A temporary, time-limited part-time timetable
- Exceptional circumstances
Children should be on time every day, as lateness results in lost learning time, makes it difficult for the children to understand the learning and can make it difficult for them to settle for the day.
A pupil who arrives late:
- Before the register has closed at 9.15am will be marked as late, using the appropriate code
- After the register has closed will be marked as absent, using the appropriate code
‘Exceptional circumstances’
Across the year there are just 190 school days. That means there are already 175 days set aside for weekends, holidays, family visits and rewarding days out. We believe every school day counts to give your child the greatest opportunity of attaining a good education and to support a happy and healthy future.
With 175 days already marked out as ‘non-school days’, you should have an exceptional reason to withdraw your child from school. The following are considered illegitimate reasons and are likely to be rejected and unauthorised.
- Trips to visit family/friends
- Your child’s birthday
- Cheaper family holidays
- Tickets to sports/culture events
100% is recognised as an expected level of school attendance. If your child is out of school for 3 days each term, then their attendance is below 95% and they’re spending more days out of school than in it! Should your child need time off due to illness, this figure will quickly become even lower. Because five days of school equates to 25 hours of learning, catching up with extra work out of school is unrealistic.
From a young person’s perspective, missing schools means:
- Missing out on fun projects and school activities
- Struggling to catch up on work
- Disconnecting with school friends
The full school policy can be found on the policy page of the website.
