Attendance

Punctuality and Attendance

Parents have a duty to ensure that their children arrive at school on time, properly dressed and ready to learn. It is very important that your child arrives at school on time so that we know your child is safe and does not miss valuable lesson time. If your child has to be absent from school, please either send a note of explanation, telephone the school, or see Miss Laidlaw or Miss Sergeant. This will ensure that your child's absence is marked as "authorised" in the class register. It is essential that parents provide us with an explanation for all absences otherwise it will be recorded as "unauthorised". Obviously, it is in your child's interest for absences to be kept to a minimum. If children miss school without a genuine reason it is bound to have negative effect on their education. Good attendance and punctuality will help your child to develop a healthy approach to work, both in school and in adult life. If your child is late, please bring them to the school office entrance. Every year the school notifies parents of the attendance rate of their child. The school is required by law to include the following information regarding attendance.

Leave of Absence Request

As part of a national drive to raise attendance because of its strong link to educational achievement, there has been an important change to the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) regulations 2006 in that the word “holiday” has been removed.  Parents/Carers of pupils at this school have understood that there is no entitlement to holidays during term time and such absences could only be authorised in a restricted number of “special circumstances”.  The wording of the amendments now uses the phrase “exceptional circumstances” and Local Authorities will be monitoring very closely schools which appear relaxed in any way. 

We work with the Local Authority to monitor this issue and apply the legal authority they have to issue fixed penalty notices.  In the meantime please be aware of the following which summarise the leave of absence regulations: 

• Principals may not grant any leave of absence during term time unless there are exceptional circumstances.
• Principals will now determine whether the Leave of Absence is granted or not.
• When requesting Leave of Absence, Parents/Carers are asked to make clear how the circumstances leading to the request are exceptional.
• Leave of Absence must be requested in advance.
• If Leave of Absence is not granted the absence will be coded as unauthorised.

There is an application form for Leave of Absence which can be obtained from the main school office or downloaded here. 

We ask parents/carers to respect these changes under which we must now work. Each application for Leave of Absence will be considered on a case by case basis and on its own merit. We greatly appreciate parental support to reduce the total amount of days lost due to holidays.   We are committed to working in partnership with you to enable your child to reach his/her academic targets and to support their social development. For this to happen we need to keep attendance a priority and for it to remain as high as possible.  We would appreciate you communicating this information to close family members.

Attendance Policy

 To view the attendance policy, please click here.