Attendance Matters

As the new academic year begins, I am writing to you with an overview of our approach to promoting outstanding attendance at Plantation Primary School.

Attending school every day and aiming for 100% attendance is a challenge but one that will impact positively on your child’s academic and personal development. As parents and carers, you’re the most important role-models when it comes to promoting the importance of outstanding attendance and ensuring that your child only stays off school when it is absolutely necessary. There may be times when your child needs to be off school for genuine reasons and as a school, we want to be able to authorise these absences. Children have lost significant time in the classroom since 2020 so it’s more important than ever to attend school every day as well as arriving on time. Poor punctuality will often lead to attendance concerns so it’s just as crucial to ensure that as parents and carers, you’re supporting your child in arriving to school on time.  Attached with this email and available on our website here is a useful letter from the NHS ‘Is my child too ill for school?’

As I have alluded to, outstanding attendance has an undeniable link to outcomes, particularly SATs results and our children with the best attendance records continue to outperform those with poor attendance records. This is the case throughout your child’s time at school; children with poor attendance records will find it difficult to make the amount of progress that they’re capable of. Attendance becomes a concern when it falls below 95% as this equates to a day off every 4 weeks. When attendance drops below 90%, this becomes a major concern and data shows that this is where learning outcomes are affected the most. We want all our students to reach their potential or even go beyond it and this will only happen if they’re in the classroom.

Where attendance is a concern, children and families are supported by Class Teachers and our pastoral support team amongst others and interventions will be used where appropriate. These can include informal conversations, meeting with the Attendance Officer, Educational Penalty Notices (an information leaflet about Education Penalty Notices is attached with this message and is also on our website here) and referrals to the Local Authority’s Attendance Enforcement Team.

Parents and carers can support their children in ensuring they end the year with an outstanding attendance record by not allowing unnecessary days off, making appointments out of school hours wherever this is possible and not taking holidays during term time. As a school, we’re here to help so please contact Mrs Fallows, our Learning Mentor, as soon as possible if you become concerned about your child’s attendance as intervening early is crucial.

Mr Hanley

Headteacher