Attendance

Good attendance is vital for children to achieve well and be happy at school.  Children who are absent regularly may fall behind or be unhappy coming to school.

What is good attendance? 

If your child has better than 96.5% attendance at school, they are doing well.   Children with 80% attendance will miss an average of one day a week and two years of school by the time they are in Year 11.  Similarly attendance of 90% may sound good but it is still half a day a week and a year of missed education by the time they are 16.  We don’t need to explain how difficult it can be for some children to make up for a year of lost time.  Under new guidance issued by the government a child is considered persistently absent (PA) if their attendance is below 90%.  

What do we do? 

We want to encourage our children to be at school as often as possible.  We reward outstanding  attendance at the end of the year by giving certificates to children  with 100% attendance.   At the end of each term, we award Gold certificates to children with 100% attendance, Silver certificates to children whose attendance is over 97% and Bronze certificates to children whose attendance has improved. Every Friday, we also celebrate children who have had 100% attendance in the preceding week.  We monitor attendance and try and support families, if we can, to improve attendance.  We will work with other agencies e.g GP surgery, to do this.    We try and make it part of our school ethos that good attendance is expected and rewarded.

What can parents do? 

Ensure you phone in on the first day of absence to give the reason for your child being absent.   If you are concerned about your child’s attendance or they seem unhappy to come to school please talk to someone as soon as possible.  Normally it is best to speak to the class teacher in the first instance and then the Headteacher.

What about holidays? 

Schools are not allowed to authorise any holiday in term-time. Following advice from the local authority, from September 2017, all the schools in the Blandford Schools Network will be issuing Penalty Notices to families who take their children out of school for  unauthorised holidays.  Please click on the button below for more information