ABSENCES & HOLIDAYS

If your child is absent, even for a short time, we expect a telephone call before 10 a.m. on the first day, if not you will be contacted after 10 a.m. A note to explain the reason for absence will also be required on their return to school. This is a legal requirement as the LEA attendance officers check our registers. Pleas do not write letters regarding absence in your child's home school link book as absence letters have to be kept alongside the class registers. Please ensure that the letters are dated.

It is very important that we record absences correctly. Different marks are used in the register to show reasons for absence, e.g. M=medical, H=holiday. If we do not receive written confirmation for the reason for absence or the reason does not fit into any of the given categories, we have to class this as unauthorised. Each day is broken into two sessions, morning and afternoon and attendance is reported in sessions rather than days. The register is taken at the beginning of each session. If your child is absent at the close of register but returns later in the session, due to attending an appointment, the whole of the session will be recorded with the appropriate absence mark. The Attendance Officer monitors our pupils' attendance on a regular basis and it is her job to highlight those pupils who fall below 85% attendance. She then informs the school of these pupils and the school is legally obliged to inform parents by letter of their child's attendance percentage.

Attendance less than 85% can lead to a school referral being made. The Attendance Officer will then visit your home and set up a six week plan to monitor your child's absences. The Attendance Officer has the authority to impose fixed rate penalty notices and can arrange for children to be examined by a Doctor. All procedures are carried out in accordance with legal obligations laid down by the government and the Local Authority.
It is essential in cases of contagious or infectious disease that the school is notified and a Doctor's clearance obtained before a child returns to school.

AUTHORISED AND UNAUTHORISED ABSENCE

The number of pupils on roll for the academic year 26/07 was 221. This includes Reception children, however for DfES purposes they are not included in the following attendance statistics.

Number of Day Pupils of Compulsory
School Age on the roll for at least one session = 190
Number of pupil sessions 58634
Number of Authorised Absences 2371
Number of Day Pupils with at least one authorised absence 175
Number of sessions missed through unauthorised absences 91
Number of day pupils with at least one unauthorised absence. 29
Percentage of sessions missed through authorised absence was 4.0 %
Percentage of sessions missed through unauthorised absence was 0.2%

An absence becomes unauthorised when:-

• the parent gives no satisfactory explanation
• holidays go over the permitted allocation of 10 full working days
• holidays are taken in SATs weeks

PARENTS HOLIDAYS
You are entitled to take your child out of school for a period of 10 school days during the academic year, for the purpose of a family holiday. (Anything over two weeks will be classed as unauthorised absence unless in exceptional circumstances, in which case the Headteacher would need to be informed).

A holiday form is available from the main entrance porch in school. Details of why pupils are being withdrawn are needed to enable the Headteacher and Governors to authorise the absence.
Please avoid the first half term between Easter and Spring Bank as each year we carry out essential assessments at this time in all classes, as well as end of key stages.

Requests for annual holidays during SATs weeks for KS1 & KS2 will be unauthorised.

Admissions	Absence & Holidays
Bullying	Discipline
School Day	School Dinners
School Prayer	School Rules
School Structure	School Uniform

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