Good Attendance Means …. being in school at least 95% of the time

GOOD ATTENDANCE MATTERS 

It is the duty of parents to ensure that their child attends school regularly and punctually.

There is a clear link between attendance and academic achievement.  Our goal is that every one of our pupils reaches their educational and social potential. 

What we expect…

It is an expectation that children are in their classrooms ready to learn by 8.45am.

Why this matters…

Ensuring your child attends school and getting your child to school on time is a legal responsibility. The 1996 Education Act states that, ‘parents and carers are responsible for their child’s attendance and punctuality.’  The impact of lateness and absence is as followed:

Children are missing learning as they are not in the classroom:

• The settling activities at the start of the day support self-regulation and allows us to emotionally support your child
• The start of the day helps us prepare and identify issues for the day so that learning throughout the day runs as smoothly as possible
• Critical developmental activities take place during this time such as letter formation work occurs during this time. There is a growing developmental gap between the development of children who arrive on time and those who are persistently late to school
• Missing chunks of learning impacts future learning
• Social skills and friendships can be affected.

Other children are affected by the lateness of others:

As children arrive late, they disturb a purposeful environment.

• Staff have to support late children over the needs of learners in the classroom
• Throughout the day, learning is disrupted, which could have been pre-empted in the morning. This distracts staff from the learning of other children
• Young children worry about their friends and where they are.

Pre-School & Reception Matter too…

Good attendance is part of a winning combination that helps a child succeed and it is never too early to start helping your child to be on time.

We need parents, especially parents of the under-5s to support this target even though your child may not be of statutory school age.

Poor attendance habits often start in Pre-School and Reception.

Our target is 95% attendance - for us, it is not about whether a child is statutory school age or not – it’s about every child accessing their entitlement to a really good education, and building their learning year on year.

We complete ‘first-day calling’ even for Pre-School children if your child is absent and we do not know why*. 

In this school, children are taught well, and we care about their progress and well-being, but every child needs to have good attendance from Pre-School onwards to ensure they get the best learning opportunities’ 

We want to help…

The school is sympathetic regarding the challenges of traffic and multiple drop-offs in Aylesbury, however, we all have a legal and moral responsibility to ensure our children arrive at school on time.

As a school, we would like to see how we can help families with this issue, whilst also establishing a firm approach to this issue.

Absence from School

If your child is absent for any reason, we ask that you telephone, email or message the school by ParentMail, as early as possible on the first day of absence so that we can record the absence and know that your child is safe.  A 24 hour answerphone service to report absences is also available.  

*The office staff will always contact parents/carers to ascertain a reason for a child's absence if no message has been received.  

Leave of absence

The Department for Education advises that parents should not normally take their child out of school during term time. For this reason, we are unable to authorise any leave of absence during term time, except under exceptional circumstances.  All applications for leave of absence should be submitted using the form below, to the Headteacher at least one month before the absence start date.

Application for Leave of Absence form