School Attendance

We believe that working together with parents is the best way to result in positive attendance outcomes, giving all our children the very best start in life. At our schools, we realise the importance of all children attending school every day and on time. Every day really does count! As a federation of schools, we set a minimum expectation of attendance for each pupil of 95%.

We know that a child’s attendance has a direct impact on their learning. Those children who are regularly absent from school and regularly late do not achieve their potential and do fall behind their peers. Please support your school by ensuring that your child attends regularly and arrives ready to learn and on time.

Lost Learning due to Low Attendance and Punctuality

The tables below identify the possible amount of lost learning due to low attendance/ punctuality. Frequent absence/lateness can add up to a considerable amount of lost learning and can seriously disadvantage your child in adult life. Your child needs to attend school for at least 180 out of 190 days to meet our 95% expectation. 

Attendance during the school year	Equals this number of days absent	Which is approximate to this many weeks absent	Which means this number of lessons missed
90%	19 days	4 weeks	100 lessons
80%	38 days	8 weeks	200 lessons
70%	57 days	11.5 weeks	290 lessons

Poor punctuality can lead to your child…

• Feeling embarrassed in front of their friends
• Missing the beginning of vital lessons making them fall behind
• Missing important instructions for the rest of the school day
• Learning bad habits which could affect their employability in the future

Types of Absence

Every half-day absence from school, by law, has to be classified as either authorised or unauthorised. This is why information about the cause of absence is always asked for.

Authorised Absences: These are mornings or afternoons away from school for a valid reason such as illness, emergency medical or dental appointments (routine appointments should if possible be made out of school hours) and emergencies.

Unauthorised Absences: An absence is classified as unauthorised if the reason was not recognised as acceptable. The Department for Education (DfE) and Local Education Authorities provide information for schools as to what is acceptable and what is not. Examples of reasons that would not be accepted:

• A birthday
• A shopping trip
• Day trips
• Holidays – unless they have been agreed as an exceptional circumstance

How to Report an Absence

Please contact the school office each morning of your child's absence before 9am to inform us and provide a reason for this. Messages can be left on the school answering machine or via email. 

Leave in Term Time

As a school, we are not allowed to authorise any requests for children to be taken out of school during term time. Requests for leave can only be granted in exceptional circumstances such as:

• Service personnel returning from active deployment.

• Where inflexibility of the parents’ leave or working arrangement is part of the organisational or company policy. This would need to be evidenced by the production or confirmation from the organisation/company.

• Where leave is recommended as part of a parents’ or child’s rehabilitation from medical or emotional problems. Evidence must be provided.

• When a family needs to spend time together to support each other during or after a crisis.

Attendance Monitoring

Attendance and punctuality are important to us and are closely monitored. For more information, please see our attendance policy. 

Continued unauthorised absences could result in a penalty notice issued by the Local Authority and in some cases legal action may be taken.

The table below shows just how much education could be missed by being late to school each day.

Minutes Late per Day	Learning Time Lost in 1 Year
5 minutes	3.5 days
10 minutes	7 days
15 minutes	10.5 days
20 minutes	14 days
30 minutes	21 days