Attendance & Punctuality
Requesting Leave during Term Time
In order to request leave within term time, you will need to read the below information, complete a Leave of Absence Request Form (see below) and return this to the office together with evidence to support the reason for the absence.
The Department for Education (DfE) have shared with schools and Local Authorities changes to attendance guidance that will become statutory and must be implemented from August 19th 2024. These changes must be made by all schools and Local Authorities across the country, with the aim of ensuring consistent approaches.
These changes have been broken down into four categories:
1) A new National Framework for Attendance Penalty Notices. Any attendance penalty notices issued after the 19th of August 2024 will be issued in line with the new regulations.
The new Penalty Notice regulations are:
• Each parent can be issued a separate penalty notice, for each child who is absent. For example, two parents and three children, each parent will receive three penalty notices for £160 each, with a family total of £960 in fines.
• The fine amount will be £160 per parent, per child paid within 28 days, reduced to £80 per parent, per child if paid within 21 days.
• This will be considered your first offence.
• The next time an offence occurs, within three years of the date the first penalty notice is issued, the fine will be £160 per parent, per child paid within 28 days, with no reduction.
• The third time an offence occurs this will be presented to Magistrate’s court with no penalty notice issued.
This will include term time leave fines, and irregular attendance. Term time leave does not just include holidays. Where a child is absent and it is believed they are absent due to term time leave, schools will be expected to carry out a home visit and see the child on or before the 3rd school day of absence.
For irregular attendance – where a child has unauthorised absences of 10 sessions (five school days) or more in any 10-week period, the school must consider escalation to prosecution. Sessions refer to each half a school day, we have two sessions a day, morning and afternoon. The school must consider the reasons for the absence, the support already offered, and the engagement of the parents/carers and young person. These 10 sessions could be made up of term time leave, unauthorised late marks, or unauthorised absence.
It is therefore important to notify school every day that your child is absent, providing a reason, and where appropriate evidence of medical appointments or prescribed medication. We will consider NHS guidance health protection in children and young people settings, including education - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) and is my child too ill for school? - NHS (www.nhs.uk) when making their decision whether to authorise absence due to illness.
2) Updates to the Working Together to Improve Attendance Guidance
From August 2024, the DfE’s guidance on attendance will become statutory. The current guidance and statutory guidance can be found at the link below.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance This clarifies the expectations for parents, schools and the Local Authority to promote the importance of regular attendance at school, and to provide ideas for support and interventions when a young person is not attending school on a regular basis.
3) Regulation changes to modernise school attendance and admission registers
The predominant change is around the use of attendance coding for schools to use on their attendance register. This may mean that you will see different marks on your child’s attendance certificate. The H code for authorised term time leave (holiday) has been removed, therefore headteachers can no longer authorise term time leave, unless there are exceptional circumstances covered by the C code and can request an attendance penalty notice if there are five or more days of unauthorised absence.
4) Regulations will come into force on the 19th of August 2024 to mandate attendance data sharing by all state funded schools.
This means that your child’s attendance will be shared with the Department for Education and the Local Authority every day. This will be live data. This will allow the DfE to provide schools with the tools to monitor and see improvements in attendance and will allow the Local Authority to provide advice, support and Early Help services. It will also allow tracking of attendance trends for example a child reported as ill in the same week each year, or a certain year group or cohort with patterns of absence.
With all the changes, the priority is supporting children to be in school every day. Every school day matters.
If your child is genuinely unwell and you feel you need to keep them off school, parents MUST call the school on the first day of absence BEFORE 9:15am. We then expect parents to call us every day a child is off school. We ask that parents contact school to inform us of absence for two reasons:
- To notify of reason of absence. We need to know if there are lots of children off school with the same illness, like vomiting or chicken pox, so we can take extra steps to minimise risk of spread to others.
- To know a child is safe at home. There have been cases in this country where children have not turned up at school but parents think they have and schools think they’re off school sick but actually a child has had an accident, played truant or worse still, have been abducted. We take safeguarding our pupils very seriously and we will not rest until we know a child is safe at home.
PLEASE NOTE: Simply calling school to notify us of reason for absence does not automatically authorise an absence. If the headteacher is not confident that the information provided is factual or medical evidence is not provided, in cases where pupils are persistent absentees, then an unauthorised mark will be given. To promote honesty, if a parent advises us their child is absent due to sickness but we subsequently learn from the child or classmates that the child is away for reasons other than sickness i.e. long weekend/holiday/day off, this will be recorded as an unauthorised absence and details logged on your child’s school record.
Patterns and trends in pupils’ attendance will be closely monitored and we will be particularly looking for:
- Absences over long weekends (Fridays and/or Mondays) or just before/after school holidays.
- Absences of multiple siblings on the same day as a regular occurrence.
- Absences on days when it is too hot/cold/raining.
It is the headteachers final decision as to whether an absence is authorised or unauthorised.
If a parent does not inform school of child’s absence
If a child is off school and the parent or carer has NOT informed the school of any reason why, then this will trigger a phone call to the parent/carer named as first contact, requesting that you call the school. If parents still do not call us then office staff will call all other numbers of the contact list until an answer is received.
How will parents know what their child’s attendance is?
- Keep up to date with what % attendance your child has so that you know if they are at risk of persistent absence (office staff will provide this for you by request).
- Speak to school staff with any concerns.
- Talk to your child about the importance of them being in school and let them know how important you feel it is.
How do we monitor attendance?
Attendance percentages are checked on a monthly basis. The school has a three tier letter system to notify all parents/carers of their child’s falling attendance:
Tier 1 – Below 95%
Letter from headteacher giving targets to improve attendance during a certain time frame and request for medical evidence of illness.This could be in the form of an appointment card, letter for a doctor or medication or prescription.
Tier 2 – Below 93%
Letter from the headteacher requesting a meeting to discuss reasons for the low attendance and offer support to help to improve.
Tier 3 – Below 90%
This is classed as a “Persistent Absentee” and will be referred to the EWO (Education Welfare Officer). They will examine the evidence we give them and decide the action to be taken.
Punctuality
Punctuality is also highly important. Pupils who arrive late to school are not only losing learning but also disrupting the learning of others as they arrive late for lessons. Pupils do not like being late into school and we witness how upsetting it can be for them. We want to prevent this.
Children may arrive at school from 8.40am and wait with parents / carers in the playground, Year 6 children who walk to school unaccompanied by an adult may wait in the shelter until 8.45am. There is no supervision on site for children before this time and the school is not legally responsible for them.
- Registration is called at 8:50am. Pupils arriving after this time will be marked as ‘late’.
- Pupils arriving after registers close at 9:05am will be marked as unauthorised.
- Concerns about punctuality will trigger the three tier letter system.
We want to help families get their child to school on time. Here are some things you can try:
- Have everything you/your child needs for school prepared the night before.
- Ensure that your child goes to bed at a reasonable time so they are not too tired to get up in the morning.
- Ensure your child has a good night’s sleep by minimising their use of devices at bed time.
- Have a consistent bedtime routine for your child.
- Set an alarm to allow plenty of time for your morning routine in getting to school on time.
- Bring your child to breakfast club (8:00am – 8:50am)