Regular attendance is an obvious factor in your child succeeding at school. We promote good attendance through class and individual awards. Parents are regularly informed of their child’s attendance rate.

Please contact the school, by note or telephone, on the first day of your child’s absence. If your child has a dental or medical appointment, please notify the class teacher in advance, especially if a school meal is required. Children who attend such appointments MUST be collected from school by an adult, and will not be allowed to leave school unaccompanied, unless in exceptional circumstances.

We believe that taking your child out of school during term time could be detrimental to your child’s progress and development at school.

Leave of absence during term time can only be granted when there are exceptional circumstances. This means that holidays will usually be recorded as unauthorised and are likely to lead to a fixed penalty notice. However, we appreciate you applying for leave of absence so that we know the reasons why children are missing school.

Fixed Penalty Notice

The Local Authority has statutory powers to use Penalty Notices to help tackle irregular school attendance and unauthorised absences. An unauthorised absence is any absence that the school has not given permission for or the parent/carer has been unable to provide a reason for the absence, which is acceptable to the school.

The Local Authority has introduced a system where any pupil who has an attendance of 85% or less with at least 15% unauthorised absence over a 6 week period or 10 consecutive sessions (five days) unauthorised absence will meet the criteria for legal intervention which could be in the form of a Fixed Penalty Notice.

A Penalty Notice is an alternative to a prosecution to the offence and can be issued when it is felt that parents/carers are failing in their legal responsibility to ensure their child attends school regularly.

If a Fixed Penalty Notice is issued it is a fine of £60 per parent per child which must be paid in one payment in 21 days, if unpaid a further invoice for £60 per parent per child is issued, both individual invoices would then have to be paid making a total payment of £120 in 28 days

Failure to pay the total amount within the timescale will result in legal action being taken.

What do attendance percentages mean?

There are 190 days in an academic year