Attendance
At Oriel, we strive to be an inclusive and diverse primary school. We aim for an environment that enables and encourages all members of the community to reach out for excellence. For our students to gain the greatest benefit from their education, it is vital that they attend school regularly.
Parents of compulsory school age (five to sixteen) children have a legal duty to ensure their children receive suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or a suitable alternative such as home education.
Why regular attendance is so important:
Any absence affects the pattern of a child’s schooling and regular absence will seriously affect their learning. Any pupil’s absence disrupts teaching routines so may affect the learning of others in the same class.
Ensuring your child’s regular attendance at school is your legal responsibility and permitting absence from school without a good reason creates an offence in law and may result in prosecution.
Attendance and punctuality in the Early Years:
Establishing good habits from the start will help your child to settle more quickly and build good habits for later life. Coming to school on time, every day helps to develop confidence.
Research has shown that, even at the earliest age, children with poor attendance and punctuality are at disadvantage later in life. They generally find it harder to make and maintain friendships, they achieve less and they often suffer from poor self-esteem.
Even if your only has a part time Nursery place, regular attendance is vitally important.
Promoting regular attendance:
Helping to create a pattern of regular attendance is everybody’s responsibility – parents, pupils and all members of school staff.
To help us all to focus on this, we will:
Report to you at least half-termly on how your child is performing in school, what their attendance and punctuality rate is and how this relates to their attainments
Celebrate good attendance by displaying individual and class achievements
Reward good or improving attendance through class competitions, certificates and outings/events;
Run promotional events so that parents, pupils and staff can work together on raising attendance levels across the school.
Understanding types of absence:
Every half-day absence from school has to be classified by the school (not by the parents), as either authorised or unauthorised. This is why information about the cause of any absence is always required, preferably in writing.
Authorised absences are mornings or afternoons away from school for a good reason like illness, medical/dental appointments which unavoidably fall in school time, emergencies or other unavoidable cause.
Unauthorised absences are those which the school does not consider reasonable and for which no “leave” has been given. This type of absence can lead to sanctions and/or legal proceedings. This includes:
- Parents/carers keeping children off school unnecessarily
- truancy before or during the school day
- absences which have never been properly explained
- children who arrive at school too late to get a mark
- shopping, looking after other children or birthdays
- day trips and holidays in term time which have not been agreed.
Whilst any child may be off school because they are ill, sometimes they can be reluctant to attend school. Any problems with regular attendance are best sorted out between the school, the parents and the child. If your child is reluctant to attend, it is never better to cover up their absence or to give in to pressure to excuse them from attending. This gives the impression that attendance does not matter and usually make things worse.
Persistent Absenteeism (PA):
A pupil becomes a ‘persistent absentee’ when they miss 10% or more schooling across the school year for whatever reason. Absence at this level is doing considerable damage to any child’s educational prospects and we need parents’ fullest support and co-operation to tackle this.
We monitor all absence thoroughly. Any case that is seen to have reached the PA mark or is at risk of moving towards that mark is given priority and you will be informed of this immediately.
PA pupils are tracked and monitored carefully through our attendance system and we also combine this with additional support where absence affects attainment.
All our PA pupils and their parents are subject to an Action Plan and the plan may include: allocation of additional support through a Mentor, use of circle time, individual incentive programmes and participation in group activities around raising attendance. All cases at risk of becoming PA are automatically made known to the Attendance Advisory Officer and some cases can lead to Pre- Court Conferences where a decision may be made to prosecute if a child’s attendance does not improve.
Absence procedures:
If your child is absent you must contact us as soon as possible on the first day of absence. If your child is off school please ring us by 9:30am each day they are off to inform us.
or you can call into school and report to the School Office.
If your child is absent we will:
Telephone or text you on the first day of absence if we have not heard from you .
Invite you in to discuss the situation with our Vice Principal.
Refer the matter to the Attendance Officer and EWO if attendance moves below 90%.
When your child returns to school they must have a signed letter from you explaining their absence – this will be kept on record (it is a legal requirement).
We monitor all pupils’ lateness, absence and attendance levels.
If your child is regularly late or often not in school we will work with you to try to improve the situation.
Telephone numbers:
There are times when we need to contact parents about lots of things, including absence, so we need to have your contact numbers at all times. So help us to help you and your child by making sure we always have an up to date number – if we don’t then something important may be missed. There will be regular checks on telephone numbers throughout the year.
Attendance officer:
Parents are expected to contact school at an early stage and to work with the staff in resolving any problems together. This is nearly always successful. If difficulties cannot be sorted out in this way, the school may refer the child to the EWO. He/she will also try to resolve the situation by agreement but, if other ways of trying to improve your child’s attendance have failed and unauthorized absences persist, these Officers can use sanctions such as Penalty Notices or prosecutions in the Magistrates Court. Full details of the options open to enforce attendance at school are available from the school or the Local Authority.
Alternatively, parents or children may wish to contact the EWO themselves to ask for help or information. They are independent of the school and will give impartial advice. Their telephone number is available from the school office or by contacting London Borough of Hounslow.
Lateness:
Poor punctuality is not acceptable. If your child misses the start of the day they can miss learning and do not spend time with their class teacher getting vital information and news for the day. Late arriving pupils also disrupt lessons, can be embarrassing for the child and can also encourage absence.
How we manage lateness:
The school day starts at 8.50am and we expect your child to be in class at that time (for children in nursery it starts earlier at 8.30am…).
To be on time your child needs to be on the playground before the bell goes! So no later than 8.45am.
Regular attendance at school is a legal requirement. It is your duty to ensure your children get to school every day.
Registers are marked by 8.55am and your son or daughter will receive a late mark if they are not in by that time. In accordance with the Regulations, if your son or daughter arrives after that time they will receive a mark that shows them to be on site, but this will not count as a present mark and it will mean they have an unauthorised absence. This may mean that you could face the possibility of a Penalty Notice if the problem persists.
If your child has a persistent late record you will be asked to meet with the Vice Principal and/or Attendance Officer to resolve the problem, but you can approach us at any time if you are having problems getting your child to school on time.
Leave of Absence in term time:
Taking leave of absence in term time will affect your child’s schooling as much as any other absence and we expect parents to help us by not taking children away in school time.
Remember that any savings you think you may make by taking a holiday in school time are offset by the cost to your child’s education. Because of the damage to your child’s learning caused by this, we do not authorise any holidays or leave in term time.
There is no automatic entitlement in law to time off in school time to go on holiday.
We do not authorise holidays during term time. Special leave may be granted under exceptional circumstance, The DFEstates:
‘Headteachers may not grant any leave of absence during term time unless there are exceptional circumstances..”
Parents can be fined for taking their child on holiday during term time without consent from the school.
Any application for leave must be made in person and will involve a meeting with the person/people responsible for school attendance. Full details of our policy and procedures are available from the school. In the very rare circumstances / exceptional circumstances were leave is granted it is important that you recognize the importance of education and understand that we are unlikely to grant permission:
When a pupil’s attendance record already includes any level of unauthorised absence.
Where a pupil’s attendance rate is already below (97%) or will fall to or below that level as a result of taking leave.
Any period of leave taken without the agreement of the school, or in excess of that agreed, will be classed as unauthorised and may attract sanctions such as a Penalty Notice.
If your child is absent from school in the days leading up to a holiday, or if they are late returning to school after a break, we will record these absences as unauthorised unless you provide us with a medical note or a very good reason why they are not in in school and we will be referring all of these cases to the Local Authority.
The local authority are issuing fixed penalty notices to parents for taking unauthorised holidays during term time!
We have targets to improve attendance and your child has an important part to play in meeting these targets.
Targets for the school and for classes are displayed in the school and you should take time to study them.
The minimum level of attendance for this school is 97% attendance and we will keep you updated regularly about progress to this level and how your child’s attendance compares.
Through the school year we monitor absences and punctuality to show us where improvements need to be made.
Information on any projects or initiatives that will focus on these areas will be provided in our Weekly Newsletter and we ask for your full support.
Summary:
The school has a legal duty to publish its absence figures to parents and to promote attendance. Equally, parents have a duty to make sure that their children attend.
All school staff are committed to working with parents and pupils as the best way to ensure as high a level of attendance as possible.
Home Contact Information:
Parents are asked to help us keep records of their addresses, place of work, phone numbers etc. up to date. The school must be notified of any such change. It may be necessary to contact you urgently if your child is taken ill or has had an accident.
Under no circumstances will children be allowed out of school by themselves during school hours. They must be collected from the school office for visits to doctor, dentist etc.
If a child is registered at school, parents have the legal responsibility for ensuring that their child attends regularly.