Attendance
Attendance Matters – Every Day Counts
Over a school year, we are open for 190 days which equates to 380 sessions with registration in the morning at 8.35am and after lunch in the afternoon.
Attendance is affected if a pupil is not present at school for any whole session including registration.
The registers close at 8.45am. It is important that children are in school on time every day to prevent disruption and upset to their day and for the rest of the class.
There is a national renewed focus on attendance and in this academic year we will be implementing more procedures and rigour to our approach to attendance. Our aim is to reduce persistent absences, pupils who are in school for 90% or less, significantly. We are also aiming to reach a target of 97% across the school. This allows up to 5 days of absence in the school year.
We are not able to authorise holidays and we will be reporting these absences to the local authority which could then lead to penalty notices being issued. Penalties can also be issued where a child is absent for more than 10 unauthorised days during the current and previous term.
Parents are required under the Education Act (1996) to ensure children attend school regularly. The headteacher of a school has a discretionary power to authorise absence only in exceptional circumstances. A family holiday is not an exceptional circumstance. If you complete a leave of absence request form and the request is declined, (as it will be in most cases) and you still take your child out of school, each parent within your household will be issued with a £60 penalty notice for each child you have taken out of school.
If a penalty notice remains unpaid after 21 days, it will increase to £120. If after 28 days, it remains unpaid you may be summoned to appear before Magistrates to explain why your child has unauthorised school absences and you may be liable for a fine of up to £1000.
Support and guidance on attendance is always available and if you have any questions about this, or if you need help to achieve an improvement, then please contact us to discuss this.