Attendance

The Importance of Attendance

Research commissioned by the Department for Education, shows missing school for even a day can mean a child is less likely to achieve good grades, which can have a damaging effect on their life chances.

Think about these questions:

1. If my child has time off at primary school, does it make that much difference?
2. They can catch up eventually, can’t they?
3. So a couple of days off isn’t that much work missed, is it?

If your child misses school, they miss lessons which may not be repeated. Being absent from school makes it hard to catch up with missed work and effects how well children do.

How much lesson time do they miss when they are off?

• Half day absent = 3 hours of lessons missed.
• 1 day absent = 5 hours of lessons missed.
• 3 days absent = 15 hours of lessons missed.
• 1 week absent = 25 hours of lessons missed.
• 2 weeks absent = 50 hours of lessons missed.

The possible impact for your child.   

• They might feel a bit left out.
• They may not know how to do the work.
• They may fall behind and find it difficult to catch up.
• They may have to make friends again.

Finally, here is what it all adds up to.

If your child continues through their whole school life only attending 90% or less every year then their GCSE results WILL be affected, see below what the chances are:-

 

How we can support your child’s attendance - Monitoring and the ‘Attendance Journey’

Below is a copy of the ‘Attendance Roadmap’ that explains the process we use to monitor attendance. Plus, the support available to pupils and families to ensure regular attendance is maintained.

We hope this demonstrates how our daily actions and processes aim to promote relationship building with children & families to prevent absence. This involves monitoring data trends & absence patterns to inform our conversations with you and your child where age allows. Should this monitoring trigger the need for an attendance conversation, a call, letter or email will be made directly to parent/carers to raise awareness of our emerging concerns. As a team, you will then be invited into school to identify ways to support an increase in attendance and support you on this journey – Steps 1–3.

Should ‘Early Help’ and ‘Formalised Support’ be unsuccessful and/or declined, more formal warnings and penalty notices, fines or legal action may be requested from the Local Authority (LA) – Steps 4-5.

If you would like to discuss your child’s attendance and/or the support available from our pastoral team, please email reception@tma.bucks.sch.uk or call the school on 01908  562262.