Attendance
At Gorsewood Primary School, we are committed to ensuring all children have good attendance and are punctual so they can reach their potential and benefit from all of the wonderful opportunities and experiences school offers.
We are committed toworking with parents to ensure good attendance and punctuality for all children.
Working together to improve attendance
Expect
Aspire to high standards of attendance from all pupils and parent/carers and build a culture where all can, and want to, be in school and ready to learn by prioritising attendance improvement across the school.
Monitor
Rigorously use attendance data to identify patterns of poor attendance (at individual and cohort level) as soon as possible so all parties can work together to resolve them before they become entrenched.
Listen and understand
When a pattern is spotted, discuss with pupils and parent/carers to listen to and understand barriers to attendance and agree how all partners can work together to resolve them.
Facilitate support
Remove barriers in school and help pupils and parent/carers to access the support they need to overcome the barriers outside of school. This might include an early help or whole family plan where absence is a symptom of wider issues.
Formalise support
Where absence persists and voluntary support is not working or not being engaged with, partners should work together to explain the consequences clearly and ensure support is also in place to enable families to respond. Depending on the circumstances this may include formalising support through an attendance contract or education supervision order.
Enforce
Where all other avenues have been exhausted and support is not working or not being engaged with, enforce attendance through statutory intervention: a penalty notice in line with the National Framework or prosecution to protect the pupil’s right to an education.
Time off school can impact the amount of progress your child makes. We use a traffic light system to track attendance. Parents/carers receive a termly update on attendance. We aim for all children to be in the GREEN or GOLD band. We support parents to improve attendance which falls in the red or orange band.
We ask parents to inform school as soon as possible if their child is going to be absent from school. We have an answerphone system so voice messages can be left or alternativey you can email or text school.
We always carry out first day calling to determine why a child is absent from school if we havent been notified. Sometimes we will carry out a home visit.
At Gorsewood, we celebrate good attendace so all classes with over 96% attendance each week receive a reward.
Where we have concerns about your child’s attendance (usually below 95%) or you have requested support, we will invite you in for meetings, set monitoring periods and set attendance targets (usually over 6 weeks). We will also work with children in school to identify barriers to attendance and work to reduce these. If there is no improvement, we will then work with other agencies including the Local Authority Education Welfare Team to further support you and your child.
Persistent absence is where a pupil misses 10% or more of school, and severe absence is where a pupil misses 50% or more of school. Reducing persistent and severe absence is central to the school’s strategy for improving attendance.
The school will:
- Use attendance data to find patterns and trends of persistent and severe absence
- Consider potential safeguarding issues and, where suspected or present, address them in line with Keeping Children Safe in Education
- Hold regular meetings with the parent/carers of pupils who the school (and/or local authority) considers to be vulnerable or at risk of persistent or severe absence, or who are persistently or severely absent, to:
- Discuss attendance and engagement at school
- Listen, and understand barriers to attendance
- Explain the help that is available
- Explain the potential consequences of, and sanctions for, persistent and severe absence
- Review any existing actions or interventions
- Provide access to wider support services to remove the barriers to attendance, in conjunction with the local authority, where relevant
- Consider alternative support that could be put in place to remove any barriers to attendance and re-engage these pupils. In doing so, the school will sensitively consider some of the reasons for absence
- Implement sanctions, where necessary (see section 6.3, above)
If your child’s attendance falls below 90%, parent/carers will receive a school target letter in the first instance requiring the child to achieve 95% attendance across a given time period. Any absence during this period will be unauthorised unless medical evidence is provided. If the target is not achieved and there is no improvement, we will refer to the Education Welfare Service where penalty notices and legal proceedings may be considered.