Attendance
At Spalding St Paul's Primary School we place great importance on good attendance and punctuality.
We know that a child’s attendance has a direct impact on their learning. Those children who are regularly absent from school and regularly late do not achieve their potential and do fall behind in class. Please support the school in this by ensuring that your child attends school regularly and arrives ready to learn and on time at 8.40am.
Attendance matters! It is important that your child gets to school on time and aims for 100% attendance!
Lost Learning due to Poor Attendance
The chart below identifies the possible amount of lost learning due to poor attendance. How does your child compare?
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90% | 19 days | 4 weeks | 100 lessons |
| 80% | 38 days | 8 weeks | 200 lessons |
| 70% | 57 days | 11.5 weeks | 290 lessons |
Frequent absence can add up to a considerable amount of lost learning and can seriously disadvantage your child in adult life.
Nationally primary pupil attendance is around 96%. This means that a child needs to attend school for at least 177 out of 190 days to meet national expectations.
Types of Absence
Every half-day absence from school, by law, has to be classified as either authorised or unauthorised. This is why information about the cause of absence is always asked for.
See the School Performance Comparison website for information on our school’s absence figures.
Authorised Absences
These are mornings or afternoons away from school for a valid reason such as illness, emergency medical or dental appointments (routine appointments should always be made out of school hours) and emergencies.
Unauthorised Absences
An absence is classified as Unauthorised if the reason was not recognised as acceptable. The Department for Education (DfE) and Local Education Authorities provide information for schools as to what is acceptable and what is not.
Examples of reasons that would not be accepted:
- A birthday
- A shopping trip
- Day trips
- Holidays – unless have been agreed as exceptional circumstances
What to do if your child is absent from school
Contact the school office (01775 723326) on the first morning of absence and notify us of the absence and provide a reason before 09:30am to register your child’s absence. If we do not hear from you then we will need to contact you by phone.
If we still cannot get in touch with you we will ring all the other emergency contact details we have on our school system then will try to email you.
If we still do not do not hear from you a member of the Senior Leadership Team will need to complete a home visit. This is to ensure you and your child is safe and we are following our school Child Protection procedures.
Attendance Monitoring
As attendance and punctuality is so important to us, we cannot be complacent where there are instances of unacceptable, low pupil attendance, or if pupils are regularly late to school.
Birmingham Education Authority is keen that we adopt measures and involve external agencies if the level of attendance requires us to do so. A computer generates reports termly and letters are sent to all parents where attendance is below 90%.
If there is not an improvement in attendance then you may be asked to come into school for a formal meeting to discuss the matter further as part of the FastTrack to Attendance process. Continued unauthorised absences could then result in a penalty notice being issued by the Education Legal Intervention Team (ELIT) and in some cases legal action being taken.
Leave in Term Time
As a school, we are no longer allowed to authorise any requests for children to be taken out of school for a holiday during term time.
Requests for leave can only be granted in exceptional circumstances, and a holiday would not be considered exceptional. Requests for leave must also be made to the school in advance. To do this please come in to the school office to complete the necessary Leave in Term Time application.
Punctuality
It is very important that all children arrive on time. School doors open at 8:40am every morning. The school gates close at 8:50am. If your child arrives after 8:50am then they are late and they will not be able to come into school via the usual morning entrance doors but should instead come through the main school entrance.
Please note that if your children arrive at school later than 9:00am, we are required to mark them as absent for that half day session.
If children are regularly late, a parent will be expected to attend a meeting to look at how punctuality can be improved.
