Research shows that good school attendance impacts upon children’s success in learning; good attendance helps them to fulfil their potential and gives them a chance of a better future. Every day that your child is absent from school is an opportunity missed.
For children to take full advantage of the educational opportunities offered, it is vital your child is at school, on time, every day the school is open unless the reason for the absence is unavoidable.
Good attendance is important because:
- statistics show a direct link between under-achievement and absence below 95%
- regular attenders make better progress, both socially and academically
- regular attenders find school routines, school work and friendships easier to cope with
- regular attenders find learning more satisfying
- regular attenders are more successful in transferring between primary school, secondary school, and higher education, employment or training.
As a school, we are committed to ensuring that every child fulfils their potential and we therefore need your help in ensuring that your child has ‘good’ attendance. We consider good attendance as 96% or more. It is fantastic if your child falls in this category.
We will be monitoring children’s attendance carefully and if your child’s attendance falls below 95%, we may contact you to discuss how we can support you going forward to ensure that your child’s attendance improves. Obviously, if a child is genuinely unwell we would not expect them to be in school. However, we have included some links to enable you to consider whether your child could be in school and ways to limit low attendance through illness. The following two links are from the NHS. This link is on the Healthier Together website - Can my child go to school today? The following NHS website also provides some useful guidelines. NHS - Is my child too ill for school?
If your child’s attendance is 90% or below, we will ask you to come in to discuss your child’s attendance with us. Please be aware that going forward it may need to be referred to the Local Authority if it remains at this level. We will work together to put in place an Attendance Plan to ensure attendance improves. Having 90% attendance or less means that your child is absent from school on average at least half a day each week.
If you do experience any difficulties with your child’s attendance or punctuality, please come in and speak to us as soon as possible so that we can ensure it does not become a serious issue.