Attendance

Our Attendance Expectations

Regular attendance at school is crucial in raising standards of education and in ensuring every child can fulfil their God-given potential here at Ss. Mary and John’s.

Missing out on lessons leaves children vulnerable to falling behind. Children who are disadvantaged by poor attendance tend to achieve less in both their primary and their secondary education. Irregular attendance, even during a child’s earliest years in education can have a detrimental impact not only on their learning but also on their confidence, social relationships and life skills.

Therefore, it is important that children are only absent from school in unavoidable circumstances such as illness.

Parents MUST NOT take their children out of school for term time holidays, shopping, visiting relatives, birthdays, or for any other avoidable reason. Children are often able to attend school with minor ailments and guidance can be provided to families on this matter. Please contact Mrs Scally in the school office for more guidance.

Finally, as mentioned above support is available for any family who may be experiencing issues with ensuring regular attendance. We ask that in the first instance, you contact Mrs Scally (our school Attendance Officer) or Mrs L Stephens (Head of School and Lead DSL).

The steps below explain the process staff in school take to enable every child to maintain good attendance and punctuality to enable every child to thrive in school:

Monitor and review attendance and punctuality.
Meet with parents/carers to identify how we can improve attendance/punctuality.
Facilitate family support.
Formalise support (only if no or little improvement is made).
Where all other avenues have been exhausted and support is not working or not being engaged with, attendance will be enforced through statutory intervention or prosecution to protect the child’s right to an education.

Authorised Absence

Authorised absence is absence for a valid reason. This includes circumstances for which leave has been granted such as sickness, medical and dental appointments, educational visits or death in the immediate family. This list is not definitive and there may be other events which fall into this category.

This list is not intended to promote authorised absence as we would expect medical and dental appointments to be arranged outside the school day.

A copy of any appointment letter or card should be shown to the office staff in school or a copy can be emailed to us.

Please note, current policies do not allow holidays during the time school is in session.

Unauthorised Absence

Unauthorised absence is unjustified absence. This is absence as a result of premeditated or spontaneous action on the part of the pupil, parent or both. Schools are required to keep attendance registers which record the nature of absence.

Leave of absence during term time

Parents are requested not to take their children on holiday during term time. Holidays taken during term time will be recorded as unauthorised.

The school may legally authorise a request for leave where there are ‘exceptional circumstances’. Please send a written request to the Executive Head/Head of School about the exceptional circumstance, where possible, we also request that parents send proof on the matter. Leave of Absence Request forms are available from the school office.

We cannot stress enough how vitally important good attendance is in ensuring your child makes good progress. If they are regularly late or missing days on a regular basis, this leads to the child falling behind in their learning.

Appointments in school time

Where possible, we ask that all appointments are booked out of school time so that children are not missing important learning time. Please speak to the office staff about any appointments your child will need to attend. Evidence of appointments will need to be shown to school staff and all appointments are recorded on the school attendance system. Should a child have to leave school to attend an appointment, then they should return to school afterwards. Parents must sign a child out of school on the signage screen in the foyer, and also sign the child back in, on their return to school.

Attendance during the school year	Equals this number of days absent	Which is approx this many weeks absent	Which means this number of lessons missed
95%	9 days	2 weeks	50 lessons
90%	19 days	4 weeks	100 lessons
85%	29 days	6 weeks	150 lessons
80%	38 days	8 weeks	200 lessons
70%	57 days	11.5 weeks	290 lessons

Punctuality

The school gates open at 8.34am and close at 8.44am. Lessons start at 8.44am so children need to be in class before this time to ensure they are well prepared to start their morning lesson. Any child arriving after 8.44am will need to be signed in by a member of office staff and this will be recorded as late. Arriving after 9.14am, will be recorded as unauthorised.

Being on time is a good thing

Gets the day off to a good start with everyone in a positive frame of mind.
Helps your child make the most of their learning and sets positive patterns for the future.
Helps children develop a sense of responsibility both for themselves and for others
Helps your child make and keep friends.
Improves self-confidence.

The impact of being late

Gets the day off to a bad start and can put you in a mood.
Can be embarrassing
May damage your child’s confidence.
Children miss vital information at the start of the day.
Disrupts the learning.

Some things that may help parents improve punctuality

Help your child get everything ready the night before (e.g. PE kit, school uniform)
Allow plenty of time to get to school
Make sure your child has breakfast or arrives at school in time for breakfast club
Help your child organise homework
Establish a good bedtime routine
Write down your morning routine with your child in a set of steps so that they can see what needs to be done. This will enable your child to see what step they are on and how many more steps there are to be completed before your child can go to school.

Ss. Mary and John’s Catholic School follows the Five Foundations of Effective Attendance Practice framework. The approach is evidence-informed and completely child-centred. Each Foundation is supported by 5 Key Performance Indicators, these are used to ensure the school can embed the Foundations framework and understand the strategic direction regarding attendance improvement.

The framework allows the school to understand the whole school approach to supporting and improving attendance, this is completely aligned to our school values. We create welcoming environments to allow all children to gain a sense of belonging and ultimately achieve academically through regular school attendance.

The five foundations of effective attendance practice framework

Procedures on Reporting a Child’s Absence

If your child is ill and unable to attend school, please contact the school office on 0121 382 3522 before 8.30am. The school answering machine will pick your message up and please following the instructions for reporting your child’s absence. A phone call needs to be made to the school office every day that your child is absent from school.

If we have not heard from a parent by 10.00am as to why their child is absent from school, the school office staff will ring all of the contact numbers registered for that child until contact is made.

Monitoring Attendance Procedures

To help keep all children as safe as possible, Mrs Stephens, Mrs Vernalls and Mrs Scally work together to monitor attendance. Every week, Mrs Scally completes attendance reports to identify any children who have a low attendance rate or are at risk of a low attendance figure. Staff in school then work together with parents and families to develop strategies to support children and families to improve attendance.

Designated safeguarding leads in school also review attendance on a regular basis to consider if any additional support from wider services and/or external partners is required to help children and families in school.

Attendance Awards and Celebration

In every newsletter we send out, we always include attendance and punctuality figures. We congratulate the class with the highest attendance rate and every term, we celebrate all of the children who have achieved fantastic termly attendance. At the end of the year, children who have never missed a day of school receive an extra special award for being in school every single day!

Your responsibilities as a parent

The law entitles every child of compulsory school age to an efficient, full-time education suitable to their age, aptitude, and any special educational need they may have. It is the legal responsibility of every parent to make sure their child receives that education either by attendance at a school or by education otherwise than at a school.

Where parents decide to have their child registered at school, they have an additional legal duty to ensure their child attends that school regularly. This means their child must attend every day that the school is open, except in a small number of allowable circumstances such as being too ill to attend or being given permission for an absence in advance from the school.