Levels of attendance have a direct impact on the progress that your children make in school therefore we will:

• Expect every child to attend on time, every day throughout the school year
• Challenge poor attendance and lateness
• Not authorise any holiday taken during term time 

The Education Welfare Service continue to offer support to schools, children and their families to address any issues impacting on attendance and would encourage parents to contact the school and/or the Education Welfare Officers if they have any concerns relating to school attendance. Education Welfare Officers can be contacted on 0118 9376545 or by email on EWO@brighterfuturesforchildren.org . 

We believe that Every Minute Matters to our children’s education and think that one of the most important times in the school day is the registration period.

We believe that when children arrive late to school they…

• Miss out on important instruction and information passed by class teachers at the start of the days learning.
• Are unable to catch up and interact socially with friends and teaching staff before settling into the school day.
• Miss lesson time – usually the key explanation of the ‘how and what’ of the task that has been set.
• Disturb and disrupt teaching - teaching staff have to repeat instructions to late children and stop teaching the children who have arrived on time.

Parental Request for Absence

Holiday dates are issued well in advance and children should not be taken out of school. There will be no authorised holiday during term time and any parents taking a holiday / leave of absence in term time risk a fixed penalty notice of a minimum of £60 per parent per child.

Pupil Absence

Please let us know if your child is going to be absent from school for any reason. We ask parents to ring before 10am as we run a system of ‘First Day Response’. If we have not heard from you as to why your child is absent you will be contacted on that day through our texting service.

We ask parents where possible to arrange medical appointments outside of the school day. If this is not possible then we would not expect children to be absent for more than half a day. Children who need to attend appointments during the school day need to be collected from the School Office so they can be signed out.

If a child’s attendance drops below 90% we ask for parents to provide evidence to support the reason for absence – for example a medical prescription, appointment documentation or hospital letter etc. Non-attendance, without evidence may be recorded on our school register as unauthorised without this.