Holidays in Term Time

Family holidays should not be booked during school time.

If parents/carers decide to take a holiday or extended leave in term time, the school will request that Children’s Services issue a Penalty Notice under section 444 of the Education Act 1996.

The penalty notice is £60 per parent per child if paid within 28 days and £120 per parent per child if paid after 28 days but within 42 days. Failure to pay the Penalty Notice will result in prosecution in the Magistrates Court.

When a child has more than 14 sessions (7 days as each day = 2 sessions) of unauthorised absence in a twelve week period, this will result in a warning being given and the issue of a fixed penalty

notice and referral to the Educational Welfare Service.

A leave of absence request form will need to be completed.

leave of absence request form

Medical Issues

Medical and dental appointments should be made out of school time except those children who we know have a medical care plan.

If hospital appointments have to be made in school time, appointment cards/letters must be submitted to school one week prior to the appointment and copies will be kept on your child’s file. If the appointment is later in the morning, or afternoon, please bring your child into school first and then collect them to take to the appointment.

If your child has a lot of short absences due to minor illnesses, school will ask the school nurse to offer support to your family. If there are a number of regular incidences of absences due to illness, then we will request that you provide medical evidence for every absence. Without this evidence, your child’s attendance will be marked as unauthorised. Children don’t tend to be ill consistently unless there is a reason and in such cases where there is a reason, there will be no problems giving school medical evidence so that the absences will not be recorded as unauthorised.

Persistent Absentees

As you know, The Department for Education announced that the threshold for Persistent Absence is 10%. This means that if your child’s attendance falls below 90%, they will be classified as a persistent absentee. So if they are absent from school for around 19 days or more across the year, they will meet this classification.

At the end of each month, your child will bring home a print out of their attendance so you can keep track of their attendance figure and know if it is in danger of dropping to near 90% or below.

Only 95% and above is acceptable as an absolute minimum.

Punctuality

All children should be on the playground for the bell ringing at 9.00 am. Children coming into school via the front door (after the bell has rung) will be logged daily and attendance procedures will be triggered if this is a frequent event. We will arrange meetings to establish why punctuality is an issue and what we can do to help you to get your child to school on time.

Our lessons start right at the beginning of the day, so children late in are missing the start of their lesson. Ten minutes late a day is 50 minutes of maths lost a week which really mounts up over the year.

Whilst these sanctions may sound quite harsh, it is in line with most schools in the country. Our consistent message to you, as parents/carers, is that “Every Day Counts” and that high attendance is essential in order to ensure that all our children achieve their full potential.

Let’s work hard together to achieve even higher than our fabulous result of 96.9% this year!

I hope that you will support the school in this matter, as we are all concerned to see children fulfil their potential at school.  I am sure you will agree that this can best be achieved by avoiding unnecessary absence.  Our door is always open if you would like to discuss any issues including attendance and we will always do our best to help you and your family.

If you need any support with attendance or punctuality please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you.