We are committed to supporting your child to attend school every day.

What is good attendance?

This table helps to show what good attendance is and how absent days look in terms of learning time lost.

We do understand that there are reasons when they may not be able to attend due to illness, long-term health conditions, medical appointments etc, but we do need to know these reasons. We have protocols in place should your child be absent:

Please call school as soon as you are able to let us know. This is really important, and we appreciate the contact from you.

If we don’t hear from you, we will call you as we need to know why your child is absent. If we do not hear from you, we will plan a safe and well check visit to your home. The visit would be by a familiar member of our team to ascertain why your child is not in school and to put in any support which may be needed.

If you have appointments, please tell us in advance where you are able to. Please can you provide evidence of the appointments too.  This can be copies of appointment letters or pictures of text message appointments and these can be sent via email to the class team or given to the class team to be photocopied and returned.

It is considered that attendance of 90% or below is persistent absence which will be closely monitored by school staff.  This may also include absence report letters and attendance meetings.

We do recognise that long-term health conditions may impact and it is important that we still have regular contact with families if this is the case. Your child’s class lead will be aware of these and will continue to check in and seek updated information.

There are things you can do to improve your child’s attendance:

• If your child is unwell and you are unsure whether to send them to school, contact the office to seek advice.
• Avoid taking any holidays during term times. Family holidays will not be authorised unless there are exceptional circumstances.  Please request a leave of absence form and the Headteacher who will then review this request, and meet with you.
• Speak to school staff with any concerns.
• Where appropriate, talk to your child about the importance of them being in school and let them know how important you feel it is.

Please do let us know if you need any support with any aspect of this. We continue to work as one team and have a wealth of resources which our St Bernard’s pastoral team can signpost and support with.