Attendance Procedure
Attendance Registers
At the start of the morning and afternoon sessions, a member of staff is required by law to complete the registers. Lateness is also recorded in the register. All late arrivals are monitored on a weekly basis and will be discussed with parents if they occur regularly.
Children arriving to school late must be accompanied by an adult and report to the office to register. They also need to explain why they are late. A child coming to school late regularly misses out on the start of lessons. Just 10 minutes late per day is equivalent to missing out one Literacy or Numeracy lesson per week.
Absence
If your child is absent from school, we would expect you to do the following:
• Telephone, email or send a message via the school app to inform us about the absence before 9.30am and the reason why.
• Provide a medical/doctors note if requested by the school so that we can keep it on record.
Types of absence
Absences are recorded as being authorised or unauthorised.
Authorised Absence
This is an absence that the school is aware of and accept as being reasonable. These absences may include:
• Illness
• Visits to the Doctor's, Hospital or Dentist known in advance, although parents are asked to make appointments out of school hours where at all possible.
Please note, all parents must provide evidence of medical appointments e.g. appointment letter.
• Religious observance (in accordance with Kirklees LA guidance)
Unauthorised Absence
This is where the reason for the absence is unknown to the school, or the reason given is inappropriate. These absences may include:
• Medical reasons that are not accompanied with an explanation or with a note on return to school
• Shopping or haircut
• Sleeping in
• Visiting relatives, attending weddings or trips to the airport
Managing Medical Absence
Medical absence forms a large proportion of authorised absence, particularly at primary level. These guidelines may help to manage it as part of our schools' attendance policy. Parents need to be aware that the school will respond to persistent medical absence.
• Only the Headteacher can authorise absence, not a parent. If a parent contacts school to say their child is ill, it is up to the head teacher's discretion to choose to authorise or not.
• Broken weeks are of concern too as it may be an indicator of family problems or child stress.
