Attendance

COVID19

Please be assured that if you are isolating or absent due to COVID19 this will not impact on your child's overall attendance. We recognise these are challenging times and want to support families in order to ensure they can follow the national guidelines.

If your child, or a member of their household, has symptoms of coronavirus then they must not attend school and should get tested immediately. You must inform the school immediately if you suspect your child has coronavirus and should update the school of the test outcome as soon as it is received.

The main symptoms of coronavirus are:

* A high temperature - this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back;

* A new, continuous cough - this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours;

* A loss or change to your sense of taste or smell - this means you've noticed that you cannot taste or smell anything, or tastes or smells are different to normal.

It is essential that all of our families follow the guidance surrounding COVID19, including any communication to isolate through the track and trace programme.

School Attendance Information

Government guidance has been very clear, in that all pupils should return to school from September 2020, unless they have COVID19 or are following the isolation guidelines.

As you are aware, we constantly monitor our pupil’s attendance and work with parents to ensure that pupils receive the education and life choices they deserve. Good attendance in school is a key objective to improving attainment.

Why worry about attendance?

• A 90% attendance rate means a pupil is missing one half day of lessons every week.  If that pupil has a 90% attendance rate through KS1 and KS2 they will have missed one half of a school year in that time!
• A pupil with an 80% attendance rate over 5 years misses one complete year of school.  In attendance terms that would mean the pupil has missed 40 days of education in a school year, just over 1 day per week.  Therefore if pupil’s attendance remains at 80% from year 1 to year 11 they will miss more than 2 full years of education!

Good school attendance contributes to all outcomes for every child. Parents should perform their legal duty by ensuring their children attend regularly and are punctual to their lessons.  Time away from school also has a huge impact on young children socially as they may find it difficult to form strong relationships with their peers if they are often absent. It is also very difficult for them to catch up on missed work which continues while they are away.

Obviously if your child has an illness they need to be kept home but please could we ask that you adhere to the following guidelines:

• Please notify us by 8.45am of your child’s absence on the first day and tell us what the specific illness is i.e. sore throat, sickness bug – not just unwell.
• Only keep your child home for as long as the illness lasts – even if this means returning to school on a Friday – this is still a school day and is a whole day of learning that your child will miss!
• Please do not keep children at home for any other reason, e.g. sibling/parent illness, birthday, day out.

We strive to work with parents to improve attendance and we will write to you to make you aware of any concerns we have if a child's attendance falls below 95% over a five week period. This monitoring will then continue until attendance/punctuality improves to a satisfactory standard.

We would ask for your on-going co-operation and if you have any concerns please do not hesitate to contact the school for support.