Attendance
“Central to raising standards in education and ensuring all pupils can fulfil their potential is an assumption so widely understood that it is insufficiently stated – pupils need to attend school regularly to benefit from their education. Missing out on lessons leaves children vulnerable to falling behind. Children with poor attendance tend to achieve less in both primary and secondary school.” School Attendance – May 2022
Improving attendance is a priority for us this year as our overall percentage has declined since the COVID pandemic. In the 2021/22 academic year our percentage fell to 94.5%.
To improve attendance we will work in partnership with our families to:
- Expect high standards from all children and parents to attend school.
- Monitor attendance data to identify patterns of poor attendance.
- Listen to parents and children to understand barriers of poor attendance.
- Support families to remove these barriers.
- Formalise support where support has not improved poor attendance.
- Enforce attendance through statutory intervention.
Our Ofsted inpsection in 2018 also identified this as an area for improvement, especially for those children who are in receipt of free school meals. Their attendance in 21/22 academic year was 91.6%.
Our overall target for the 22/23 academic year is 97%.
Everyone at school works very hard at improving attendance as only when children attend school regularly do they take full advantage of the exciting curriculum we have and achieve all they are capable of.
Thank you to all the parents who support the school and their children’s education by ensuring they attend as much as possible.
School Attendance Policy – this outlines the rewards for children who have an overall attendance of 98% and 100%.
Please be aware that Staffordshire’s code has now changed to;
New guidance came into force from 1st January 2018 and is detailed below:
Penalty Notice for leave of absence (holiday) in term time
From 1 January 2018 any period of unauthorised leave may result in you as a parent receiving a penalty notice fine. Your head teacher will continue to be the only person able to authorise leave in term time, but this will apply only in exceptional circumstances. Any unauthorised absence will be referred by your head teacher to the local authority.
Penalty Notice for persistent lateness
Previously a pupil had to achieve 20 unauthorised late marks before a penalty notice warning could be issued. This has now changed to 10 marks, and late marks do not have to be one after the other in order for the penalty notice to be issued. You are therefore encouraged where possible to ensure your child attends school on time. However, if your child is late you must inform the school of the reason(s) why, as they may be able to offer you some form of advice or support.
