Attendance and Punctuality

There is a clear link between poor attendance at school and lower academic achievement. Clearly there are many other factors in the level of attainment of any particular child, but it is very clear that high attendance is usually an important contributing factor to doing well at school.

Our school target for 2019-20 is 97% attendance.

Children who are persistently late for morning registration can arrive in class flustered and embarrassed. They miss out on their early work, which has been set by their teachers. This contributes to a poor start of the school day, so it should be avoided wherever possible.

For times of the school day please read the page School Day

Where an individual child’s absence falls below 95%, we monitor this carefully.  Where a child misses more than 15% of any school term, this is regarded as ‘persistent absence’ and becomes a cause of a significant concern to us – although naturally there are sometimes quite understandable reasons, such an illness.  If we have concerns, we will always talk to the parents/carers first with a view to agreeing a strategy for improvement.  If after our intervention there is no improvement, we will refer the case to the Education and Welfare Officer.

Requests for holidays in term time

There is no automatic right to take a child out of school for a holiday unless there are exceptional circumstances.   If you choose to take your child out of school without authorisation from the Head of School, then you could be issued with a fixed penalty notice. 

We believe that the key to good attendance is to build a happy and safe environment where the children enjoy their learning and home/school partnership is strong.

We trust that you will support us with our aim for all children to achieve the best they can and send your child to school every day and on time, unless they are genuinely too ill to attend.