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:

Send CofE school expects all parents/carers to adhere to the following update procedures whenever your child is absent from school. 

• If your child is absent from school, please call our school absence line by 9.15am and leave a message with your child’s name, class and reason for absence. The absence line is open 24 hours. 

Alternatively, please email attendance@sendcofe.co.uk 

• Please leave a message on the absence line for each day your child is off school. It may become a safeguarding issue if we do not hear from parents and carers.

• If your child has a medical appointment, please bring in an appointment card or letter to confirm this. Where possible, please bring this in in advance of the appointment. Children can still attend school in the morning or afternoon of the day they have an appointment.

• We have a responsibility to monitor pupil attendance. This means that is your child’s attendance drops below 96% you may receive a letter or a call from a member of the attendance team. This is to let you know that attendance has dipped and is an offer of support. 

• If your child has 3 separate periods of absence, you may receive a letter from the attendance team asking you to provide medical evidence for any absence moving forwards. This is in line with other school across Surrey. Failure to provide evidence will mean that the absence is unauthorised. 

• If attendance continues to drop, it may result in a referral to the Surrey Inclusion Team.