At Send CofE we believe every school day counts to give your child the greatest opportunity of attaining a good education and to support a happy and healthy future. Attendance and achievement are closely linked and good habits, developed early in life do have an impact on levels of achievement.

Unless a child is too ill to attend, they are expected to come to school on time, every day. 

 We monitor the attendance of all children regularly. While we always aim for 100% attendance, we also recognise that children can be too unwell for school so our target for attendance is 96% or higher.

Why does attendance matter? 

• There are just 190 days in a school year.
• There are already 175 days of holiday and weekends. 
• At 92% attendance, your child is spending more days out of school than in it!

From a young person’s perspective, missing schools means:

• Missing out on fun projects and school activities
• Struggling to catch up on work
• Disconnecting with school friends

Parents are responsible for: 

• Ensuring that their children are on time for morning registration, 8.30 - 8.45am.
• Informing the school before 9.30am on their first day of absence and every day thereafter.
• Collecting their children on time (3.15pm)
• Not taking holidays during term time, anything 5 days and over may incur a fine of £60 per child, per parent. (a family of 2 children with 2 parents could receive £240 in fines)

With 175 days already marked out as ‘non-school-days’ for weekends, holidays, family visits and rewarding days out; you should have an exceptional reason to want to withdraw your child from school. The following are NOT considered legitimate reasons and are likely to be rejected and unauthorised:

• Trips to visit family/friends
• Your child's birthday
• Cheaper family holidays
• Tickets to sports/culture events

If you wish to request withdrawal of your child from learning, you will need to complete a request form which is available from the school office or you can download a copy from the link below.

 

Attendance procedures:

The Department for Education introduced changes to attendance guidance that became statutory in August 2024. 
In this, there are important changes to how we manage absence and the consequences for poor school attendance. 

If your child is ill: 

• Parents must let the school office as soon as possible and no later than 9am

• The school must decide whether to authorise the absence on the grounds of illness. This means parents need to give us details with the absence e.g. temperature, vomiting.

• If the reason given for absence is “they are poorly” we cannot authorise your child’s absence.

If a child is absent with no explanation given then we are expected to carry out a home visit and see the child as soon as possible and before the 3rd school day of absence. A member of our school DSL team will carry out this home visit.

If you need to take your child out of school during term time, the absence can only be authorised if it is considered that there are exceptional circumstances. Since 2013, schools have not been allowed to authorise requests for children to be taken out of school for a holiday during term time unless there are truly exceptional circumstances, unfortunately the cost of the holiday is not classed as an exceptional reason. 

 

Parents can now be given a penalty notice or prosecution for 2 reasons: 

• Any period of unauthorised holiday

• If your child has 10 sessions of unauthorised absence in a 10 school week rolling period.

  • These 10 sessions may include any unauthorised absence, including leave in term time and do not have to be consecutive.

  • Arriving after the register has closed at 9.15am counts as an unauthorised absence for that session.

Issuing a penalty notice is not something which we would do lightly, especially as the school doesn't receive a penny of the fine, but it is now the expectation that these will be used more frequently by all schools.

Penalty Notices:

These have increased  to £160, per parent, per child. This can be reduced to £80 but only for the first Penalty Notice issued, if paid within 21 days – this reduction does not apply to any subsequent Penalty Notice. Any 2nd Penalty Notice, to the same parent for the same child, issued within three years of the date of the first Penalty Notice will be charged at a flat rate of £160. A third Penalty Notice will not be issued within a three year rolling period, to the same parent for the unauthorised absence of the same child, – alternative action or legal measures will be utilised for subsequent offences.