Absence and Attendance
Burghfield St. Mary’s CE Primary School is committed to providing an education of the highest quality for all pupils.
Promoting good school attendance, good punctuality and reducing absence is central to ensure:
- every pupil’s day-to-day welfare and safeguarding
- every pupil has access to full-time education
- that pupils make good progress academically and personally
- that pupils leave with the best possible opportunities for their future.
All parents want the best for their children and for them to get on well in life. Having a good education is important to ensure that they have the best opportunities in their adult life. They only get one chance at school, and your child’s future may be affected by not attending school regularly. If children do not attend school regularly they may:
- Struggle to keep up with school work. In a busy school day it is difficult for schools to find the extra time to help a child catch up.
- Miss out on the social side of school life. Poor attendance can affect children’s ability to make and keep friendships; a vital part of growing up.
Setting good attendance patterns from an early age, through primary school, will also help your child later on in their life. Children who have a poor school attendance record may have less chance of securing a job when they are adults.
Burghfield St. Mary’s CE Primary School is committed to recognising and rewarding good attendance for children across the school. The school will discuss and celebrate good attendance to help pupils and parents to understand the importance. This can be done through publicising good attendance during assemblies, newsletters and the termly report to the Governing Body. The school will remain mindful that some children, due to long term medical conditions, may never be able to achieve a high rate of attendance. This is taken into account when celebrating good attendance and will include improved attendance so that individuals are not disadvantaged in these circumstances.
We feel everyone has a shared responsibility for ensuring pupils’ attendance at Burghfield St. Mary’s CE Primary School is the best it can be.
Pupils (when developmentally ready to take some responsibility) are expected to:
- Attend school every day
- Arrive at school on time
- Be appropriately prepared for the day and ready to learn
- Tell a trusted adult if there is a problem that might affect their school attendance.
Parents are responsible for:
- Ensuring that their children attend school regularly and on time
- Informing the school on the first day of absence, by 09:30am, with an explanation given
- Providing full contact details, and emergency contact details; and update the school if any changes to these occur
- Working in partnership with the school to resolve issues which may lead to non attendance
- Avoiding arranging medical/dental appointments during school hours
- Not booking holidays during term-time
- Treating staff with respect
- Actively supporting the work of the school
- Asking staff for help when they need it
- Communicating as early as possible circumstances which may affect absence or require support
- Proactively engage with support offered.
All school staff are responsible for:
- Promoting good attendance
- Providing a welcoming and safe environment, which encourages attendance and promotes the best performance from children
- An awareness that absence from school is a potential safeguarding risk and understand their role in keeping children safe
- Expecting regular attendance and punctuality from all members of the school community.
The Headteacher and Senior Leadership are responsible for:
- Ensuring the Attendance Policy is consistently applied throughout the school
- Conveying clear messages about how absence affects attainment, wellbeing and wider outcomes
- Empowering all staff to take responsibility for attendance
- Recognising attendance as an important area of school improvement. Make sure it is resourced appropriately (including through effective use of pupil premium funding if appropriate) to create, build and maintain systems and performance
- Having a Senior Attendance Champion in the senior leadership team with clearly assigned responsibilities which are identified within the attendance policy, escalation of procedures and school improvement plan. In our school this is the Head Teacher (Karen Carmichael)
- Analysing attendance data to target attendance improvement efforts to the pupils or pupil cohorts who need it most
- Making sure staff receive professional development and support to deploy attendance systems effectively
- Consulting with the Local Authority Education Attendance Service where there are concerns around a pupil's attendance or if there is a child missing from education
- Ensuring Governors have an accurate view of school attendance and engage in escalation procedures where appropriate.
