New Attendance Policy

Dear Parents and Carers,

As mentioned before the start of term, I am writing to tell you more about the new Attendance Policy from the 3-18 Education Trust.  Attendance at Coleham School is excellent, and our Trust have developed a new, clearer policy to help support schools and families to better understand what is and isn’t authorised absence; when children should be absent, and what procedures should be.

The document is quite a long one, but has all the information that you need.  There are also several appendices with clear information.  They are all worth reading through, but the main ones for your information are:

• Appendix D: UK Health Security Agency Guidance on reasons to keep children off school
• Appendix E: Request for term-time absence form
• Appendix I: Graduated response for attendance (what happens at various stages of absence)
• Appendix J: Graduated response for punctuality (what happened at various stages of punctuality)

Attendance policies are always designed to support families and not criticise.  Monitoring attendance data carefully allows schools to spot where support is needed, and what kind of support is required.  We will never chase attendance for chronically ill children, but we will sometimes need to ask questions about illnesses so that we are able to be held to account by the Local Authority.

MAIN POINTS TO NOTE

• Authorised and Unauthorised absences are clarified on page 8 of the policy (Section 4) and is also listed on the Request for Leave form (Appendix E)
• When your child is too ill to attend school, the reason must be more specific than simply “ill”. This is for our records which cannot be generic and vague.  Please email absence@col.318education.co.uk rather than a verbal message.
• Requests for leave in term-time must be filled out 1 week before the absence.
• The Request for Leave form (Appendix E) has information about what can and cannot be authorised.
• When a child is absent for more than 5 days (regardless of the reason), a safe & well check must be carried out by staff in order to comply with safeguarding obligations. This could be a personal or virtual visit and is always a supportive measure.
• Children who are nearing, or are below the 90% mark will be contacted by school to offer any support the family may require.

If you have any concerns about your child’s attendance needs, please do feel free to speak to us for advice.

Yours sincerely

Tom Larkham

Headteacher