Absence Reporting
Attendance
It is your responsibility as parents to ensure that your child/children attend school regularly. For the safety of all children it is important for you to telephone the school office prior to/ at the beginning of any absence.
Absence Line Number – 01387 702799
Absences are recorded in class registers and frequent or irregular absences not supported by a reasonable excuse, will be notified to parents/carers and the matter may be referred to the Attendance Officer.
If possible please try to make dental/medical appointments out with school hours. However, if this is not possible, please inform us in writing or by telephone of the appointment and arrange to collect your child from class.
Unexplained Absences / Lateness
In order that our procedures work efficiently and effectively we require your cooperation. Please ensure that:
- The school is informed if the family is running late.
- Any legitimate absence is notified to the school by telephone before 8.50am on the first day of the absence without fail, and that further calls, before 8.50am, are made on every subsequent day of the absence.
- Contact telephone numbers, whether for home, for parents at work or for other emergency contacts, are kept up to date and are genuinely numbers where a response will be received. This is particularly important with mobile phone numbers.
- The school is kept informed of the absence and the likely return date.
- Any planned absences are officially notified to the school, in writing, in advance.
- School should be informed as soon as possible, and certainly before 1.50pm if a child is not returning to school after lunch as a result of becoming unwell over that period.
- Latecomers report to the school office on arrival at school.
- Staff will ensure that absences are checked every day and follow up the whereabouts of any child for whom we have no explanation.
Holidays
The Government has highlighted the importance of school attendance to a child’s development and has required schools to set targets for improved attendance. Against this background, there is considerable concern at the increasing number of term-time holidays being taken by children at the request of their parents.
The Headteacher is not in a position to refuse permission to parents for such holidays but it is the view of Education Services that these holidays should be officially recognised as “unauthorised”.
Education Services recognises that some parents have difficulties in arranging their own holidays to suit school holiday periods and parents remain free, within reason, to remove their children for holidays during term time. They should, however, appreciate that prolonged absence from school at any stage is harmful to a child’s education and it is not possible – not fair to other children – to direct teaching time to assist a child who has been on holiday to catch up on what they have missed. This means that, whilst parents are at liberty to remove children from school for the purposes of family holidays, such absences will be recorded as ‘unauthorised’. Parents should continue to inform the school, in writing, of any such holiday plans.
The exception to this is when a family holiday is judged to be important to the well-being and cohesion of the family following serious or terminal illness, bereavement or other traumatic events.