Attendance 

Attending School on a regular basis is the key to your child doing well at school and will set them up with good routines for later life and the working world, as well as giving your child the opportunity to:

• Make lots of friends and feel included

• Learn new things and develop many skills

• Increase confidence and self esteem

• Improve social skills

• Achieve potential and fulfil aspirations.

If your child is too unwell to come to school, please phone or email the school office before 09.00am and keep us updated on each subsequent day of absence, or after a period of time agreed with the school. You should be specific about their reason for non-attendance: it is not sufficient to simply say that they are unwell. If your child does not attend school and you have not contacted us to say that she or he is ill, we will telephone you. 

We recognise that it is sometimes difficult to arrange medical and dental appointments outside of school hours but ask that you do so whenever possible. 

Children arriving after 08.50am will be marked as late on the register. Please bring your child to the school office so that a member of staff can take them to their class. You will need to sign your child in via the book in reception. 

Punctuality

Your child should make sure they are at school on time, ready for the register to be called. If your child is late for no valid reason. this will be recorded as an unauthorised absence.

When a child arrives late to school it can be very disruptive to your child, the teacher and other children in the class. If your child arrives late to school they will be marked as late on the register. If your child arrives very late, the child will be marked as an “Unauthorised Late” – this is the same as an Unauthorised Absence.

Absence during term time 

The law states that children must attend school every day that school is open unless they are too ill to attend or have advance permission from the Headteacher for term-time leave. Headteachers have some discretion to authorise absence in term time for significant family events. Applications will be considered individually but will generally be authorised only for family events where the date is out of the family’s control, such as visiting a sick relative or a wedding. 

All requests for term time leave-of-absence must be made in person to the Headteacher at least two weeks in advance, unless the situation is an emergency. Parents should complete an absence form obtainable from the school office. 

Late collection

We appreciate that on the odd occasion a child may be collected late – in such a case the parent/carer is responsible for calling ahead to inform the office. Where this goes past 15:20 the child will be taken to After School Club and parents will be charged £5 for this. This charge also applies to late collection from After School Club, where collection goes past 18:00