Attendance Matters 

Primary national pupil attendance is around 96%, meaning that a child needs to attend school for at least 177 out of 190 days to meet national expectations. 

Understanding types of absence 

Every ½ day absence from school, by law, has to be classified as either authorised or unauthorised. Therefore the school will always ask for information about the cause of absence. 

Authorised absences are mornings or afternoons away from school for a good reason, such as illness, medical appointments and emergencies. 

Unauthorised absence 

The Department for Education (DfE) and Local Education Authorities provide information for schools as to what is acceptable and what is not. 

Examples of reasons that would not be accepted and therefore marked as unauthorised: 

A birthday 

A shopping trip 

Day trips 

Holidays – unless have been agreed as exceptional circumstances 

What should I do if my child is absent from school? 

Contact the school office on the first morning before and notify us of the absence and provide a reason. 

The school will phone on Day 1 of an absence to request the reason for the absence. Miss Seaman or Mrs Wright will carry out a safe and well visit if there are any concerns.  

Punctuality 

All children must arrive on time. If your child arrives late, they will not be able to come into school via the usual morning entrance doors but should instead come through the main school entrance. We will then be able to mark registers and ensure your child is marked for a school dinner. 

Please note that if your children arrive at school later than 9:30, we must mark them as absent for that half-day session. 

If children are regularly late, a parent will be expected to attend a meeting to look at how punctuality can be improved. 

Promoting Attendance and Support 

We believe that working together with parents is the best way to achieve positive attendance outcomes for our children. 

We do not issue individual rewards for attendance as we do not wish to make any child who has health issues or complicating factors feel like they have failed. However, we share class attendance with children each week, and the class with the highest attendance is mentioned in our Celebration Assembly.  

Our team, Miss Seaman, Miss Peniston and Mrs Wright, are happy to work with both children and families to improve attendance and punctuality. So come and talk to us if you are having problems. 

Attendance Monitoring 

As attendance and punctuality are so important to us, we cannot be complacent when there are instances of unacceptable, low pupil attendance or if pupils are regularly late to school. 

Sheffield Local Education Authority is keen that we adopt measures and involve external agencies if the level of attendance requires us to do so. A computer generates reports termly, and letters are sent to ALL parents where attendance is below 90%.