Term Dates

Monday 6th September 2021

Friday 22nd October 2021

Tuesday 4th January 2022

Monday 25 April 2022

Monday 25th July 2022

You are required under the Education Act (1996) to ensure your child attends school regularly. If your child accrues 10 sessions of unauthorised absence you may be liable for a penalty notice (one day absence equals two sessions and five-day absence is equal to 10 sessions).

An unauthorised absence is any absence that the Head teacher has not given permission for or where an explanation has not been provided by the parents.

Parents must complete a request for absence from school in exceptional circumstances form and submit this to the school, allowing for sufficient time to enable the school to consider the request and inform parents of the decision.

Where parents do not follow the school's procedures of submitting an request and simply remove their child without seeking prior approval, a warning may not be given and you may be liable for a penalty notice.

If your request is declined, or you do not follow the correct procedure and you still take your child out of school, each parent within your household may be issued with a £60 penalty notice for each child you have taken out of school. If a penalty notice remains unpaid after 21 days, it will increase to £120. If after 28 days it remains unpaid, you may be summonsed to appear before Magistrates to explain why your child has unauthorised school absences and you may be liable for a fine of up to £1000.

If a child is consistent at gaining 90% attendance it sounds pretty good but what does it mean?

90% attendance a year means they are missing the equivalent of:

½ day of school missed every week

4 weeks of school missed a year or

1 whole year over the child’s school life

Research by the DfE suggests that a child absent from school for 17 days each academic year equals a whole GCSE grade drop in achievement.

What is the impact?

Even a few days absence can impact on a child’s progress:

Children with less than 6 days absence = 91% achieved at least 5 GCSE’s

Whereas those with more than 12 days = 36% achieved at least 5 GCSE’s

So, 90% is not as good as it first seemed.

Please help your child reach their maximum potential by ensuring they are at school every day. If your child is ill, please contact the school the first morning of absence. Medical evidence will be requested for any absence due to illness five days or more. If your child needs time off to attend a medical appointment, where possible try to arrange these outside of school hours. Absences for other reasons will only be authorised where parents can show the Head teacher exceptional circumstances exist.

If you have any concerns regarding attendance please do not hesitate to contact the school.

Please click here to view the flow chart which explains how we monitor and assess attendance

To view our attendance policy please click here