Attendance
Attendance
Pupil Attendance
Absence in term time can damage a child’s education and future life prospects, particularly for those pupils with existing attendance problems, those struggling with education or being absent at critical times in the school year. At Our Lady and St. Edward's Catholic Primary School we are committed to working in partnership with families and services to manage and reduce school absence due to leave during term time. We aim to ensure that every child receives the maximum benefit from the education opportunities provided.
We will do anything we can to help you ensure your child attends school regularly.
Rewards and Praise
We have a range of rewards in place to celebrate good attendance across school, ready to be launched in January 2025, please keep a look out in your SchoolSpider emails.
Important Information you need to be aware of about Attendance:
- Regular and punctual attendance of pupils at school is a legal requirement and is essential to ensure that children remain safe, achieve their full potential and improve their life chances.
- Every pupil at this school is required to maintain an attendance level of 96% and above.
- As a parent/carer, you commit an offence if you fail to ensure your child attends school regularly and punctually. Failure to do so may result in a referral to the Attendance and Family Support Team to help support you to get your child into school.
- When your child is absent, it is important that you contact us with a reason. Failure to provide an acceptable reason for absence will result in the absence being recorded as unauthorised.
- Of course, we understand that there are times when children become ill and such absences will be authorised unless the school has a genuine concern about the authenticity of the illness. If your child is suffering with a minor illness, please let your child’s class teacher know and an extra dose of TLC can be administered in school!
- Persistent Lateness has a significant impact on your child’s learning. Good attendance is essential for learning and for the development of self-discipline and positive work habits. If your child repeatedly arrives late for school, we will write to you, asking you to meet with us to discuss the reason for this; your attendance at these meetings is vital.
- When our registers close in the morning and the afternoon. If your child arrives late you will need to personally sign them in as late on the Compass Kiosk console in reception. Please note that this may take longer during busy periods of the day - don’t worry though, your child will not be required to wait with you, they can go to their class straight away. It is vital that you sign your child in; if you do not sign your child in, we will not know your child is on site which is a safeguarding / health and safety risk. You will be contacted for an explanation as to why your child is not in school; this is something we wish to avoid.
- Arriving late after registers are closed on 10 separate occasions may result in a Fixed Penalty Notice being issued.
- Leave of Absence requests must be made via email to [email protected] However, please note that leave of absence during term time will not be authorised, except where exceptional circumstances apply. (rare, significant, unavoidable and short) A family holiday / event is not considered an exceptional circumstance.
- Persistent Absence – any child whose attendance falls below 90% is deemed to be a Persistent Absentee. If the child’s attendance does not improve you may be liable to prosecution.
- The Headteacher is responsible for determining whether leave of absence is authorised or not and whether a Penalty Notice should be issued.
Penalty Notices will be issued by the Local Authority in the following circumstances:
a) Your child has had 10 or more sessions (e.g. 5 days) of absence in a period of no more than one term or two half terms and meets the terms of prosecution.
b) Your child has 10 sessions (equivalent to 5 days) of unauthorised leave of absence in term time and you have been advised that the leave of absence does not constitute the Headteacher/School’s view of an exceptional circumstance.
c) Your child has taken leave of absence in term time without parents/carers requesting authorisation from the school.
d) Your child arrives late after the registers are closed on 10 or more separate occasions in any one term.
e) An exclusion has taken place and the parent/carer has allowed the child to be present in a public place during school hours, without reasonable justification, during the first five days of a fixed or permanent exclusion.
Penalty Notices will be issued to each parent for each child.
- Wirral Council will issue Penalty Notices on behalf of the school. Payment of a Penalty Notice is £80 if paid within 21 days and £160 if paid after 21 days but within 28 days. Payment is not retained by the school.
We wish to work in partnership to avoid this.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are concerned about your child’s attendance – we are committed to doing all we can to help you.
Please see the following documents for further information: