Attendance and Punctuality

Good attendance is its own reward and builds a habit for life that can bring long term intrinsic rewards.

We also reward good attendance in the following ways.

Each week, the top attending class is giving the attendance trophy to keep in their class for a week.

Each half-term all children with 100% attendance for the term are given a 100% attendance certificate.

The most improved attendances overall are given a certificate to recognise the achievement of improving attendance.

Attendance is shared with parents in a number of ways:

1) Up to date attendance figures are available through the My Child At School App. 

If you need help accessing this, please contact the school office.

2) The newsletter contains weekly attendance updates as seen below.

3) We have a visible display in the school corridor.

4) We share attendance alongside the annual report at the end of the academic year.

We offer wraparound care to help with attendance at our breakfast club and Wrapz after school club.

More information can be found here.

Breakfast club is supported by Magic Breakfast offering healthy breakfast options.

Sometimes it may be necessary to meet to address poor attendance, particularly children who are below 90% attendance.

These meetings are intended to be supportive measures to improve attendance and it is important that we work together to improve attendance rates.

It may be necessary to create an attendance contract to set clear goals around attendance and meet regularly to review attendance rates.

It may be tempting to book a family holiday in term time to save on costs during the cost of living crisis. However, family holidays in term time are not allowed in law and are very unlikely to be authorised.

Taking children on leave without applying for authorisation may mean the school has to report your child as ‘missing’ to the local authority and holidays cannot be authorised retrospectively in law. Adding even more absence to the time children have already missed only means that the children miss even more lessons that will not be repeated.

Family emergencies also need careful consideration. It is not always appropriate or in the best interests of the child to miss school for emergencies which are being dealt with by adult family members. Notifying the school of leave due to a family emergency does not mean it will be authorised.

Please note that where parents fail to ensure their child attends school regularly, legal action, including penalty notices, may be considered. New regulations also mean that children on extended period of leave may lose their school place where there is no evidence of a timely return to school, or the date provided is too far away. 

You may be aware of the changes to the law related to school attendance, in particular the new national penalty notice framework which came into force on the 19th of August 2024.

Penalty notice amounts have increased and there is now an escalation process for repeated offences. The Government has brought in the changes due to concerns about the decline in attendance linking to a deteriorating attainment and progress levels for children over the last few years.

There is more information for parents here from Lambeth.

We also aim to follow the Working Together to Improve Attendance guidance from the government here.

Children who are registered at a school but regularly fail to turn up are officially referred to as being ‘persistently’ or ‘severely’ absent. 

The school day is split into two sessions – one session counts as a morning or afternoon spent in school. Pupils who have missed more than 10% of school sessions are considered persistently absent, while children who have missed more than 50% of school sessions are referred to as severely absent.