Attendance
Parents and guardians are legally required to ensure their children are in school every day. Our attendance target as a school is 96%. It is a target that we would like to smash!
We as a school aim to be fair and consistent in our Attendance Policy. We will keep parents informed if their child’s level of attendance falls and will write to you if your child’s attendance percentage drops to a level that causes concerns. We have an Education Welfare Officer linked to the school who can meet with any parent who is having difficulty with their child attending school for whatever reason.
Absences will be unauthorised if we don’t hear from you with a valid reason for your child not being in school. Birthdays, shopping for uniform, having no one to bring them are not valid reasons. Fixed penalty notices will be issued by Suffolk County Council for unauthorised absences, usually 6 sessions but we withhold the right to inform them at a lower level if we have reason to.
Late marks are monitored and passed to the Education Welfare Officer when they reach an unacceptable level (6 lates). If your child is late by more than 15 minutes (arriving after 9.10am or 1.15pm) the session will be classed as an unauthorised absence and will count towards a Penalty Notice.
Our expectation of you as parents is that you keep us informed of your child’s whereabouts at all times if they are not in school. This means a phone call each day before 9.15am to inform us of any illness. If they are ill for more than a couple of days we would expect a visit to the GP. Please keep your appointment card to show the school as evidence of illness if it is required.
Please see below for advice on keeping your child away from school due to illness:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/is-my-child-too-ill-for-school/
We expect that routine appointments with dentist/optician/doctor are made outside of school hours where possible. If you have an unavoidable appointment in school time we will authorise one session of absence for that appointment (one registration session, either am or pm).
Holidays cannot be authorised apart from very exceptional circumstances. Funerals are authorised for close family members, as are music/dance exams or similar. We would expect notice of these events for the school diary. Any pre-planned absence that is not illness or medical related will require you to complete a Leave of Absence form, which is available from the school office.
If you are having difficulties regarding attendance, please talk to us. We want to work together to ensure your child is in school at all times.
