Attendance
Regular attendance is crucial for children to achieve their potential at school. Children with poor attendance are disadvantaged in many ways.
Lateness: Please help us by getting your children to school on time. All children should be in school for registration at 8.55am, school doors open at 8.40am for children to go into class. School finishes at 3.15pm.
Lateness causes severe disruption to the classroom routine, and results in children being missed from both attendance and dinner registers. It also puts children at a disadvantage as they find it hard to settle to work and can miss vital teacher input.
What to do if your child is ill
Please telephone the school by 9.15am on the first morning of absence and each subsequent day.
If your child has an appointment in the morning after which they will be returning to school ie doctors, dentist, hospital etc, please telephone before 9am so that your child can be entered on the dinner register.
Please try to make appointments outside of the school day as it does cause disruption to the children’s day.
Please note that for sickness or diarrhoea the current guidelines laid down by the Health Protection Agency state that children should not return to school for 48 hours after the final episode (and should not swim for 2 weeks after the last episode). Please comply with these guidelines as sickness and diarrhoea spread very easily in the classroom environment.
Absence & Term Time Holidays
It is the responsibility of all parents to ensure that their children attend school. All absence from school affects a child’s education. Some absence is beyond parental control, for example sickness, medical appointments etc however, please note that from September 2013, Headteachers no longer have the discretionary power to authorise absence for holidays.
The Head teacher has a statutory responsibility to closely monitor school attendance. Parents of children whose attendance has dropped below 90% at the end of each term will receive a letter from the head teacher and persistent poor attendance will be referred to the Local Authority. The government collects annual statistics on attendance from every school.
For further information please see our Attendance policy. in the policy section. Please note that penalty notices are now issued when a child has more than 10 sessions (e.g. 5 days) absence in a 7 week period for unauthorised holiday, or when absent for holiday prior to statutory tests during the term when tests are taking place e.g. KS2 SATs , Y1 phonics.