Attendance
Regular attendance and punctuality is extremely important for children to feel settled and to make good progress. If you are experiencing any difficulties, please talk to us and we will try to help. Speak to your child's class teacher in the first instance, or Mrs Newcombe, our Home School Liaison worker, who is able to offer support and guidance to children and parents.
Whilst we recognise that there are often things that happen beyond parent's and our planning and control, good attendance is essential and school will look for ways to try to improve this.
Late procedures
If you know you are running late for drop off or pick up, please ring the school office to let us know. This is especially important at the end of the day, so we can reassure your children if you are late. They will be safe with us, but we can stop them worrying if we can tell them you have phoned and are on your way.
For obvious safeguarding reasons, it is our strict policy to never allow a child to be collected by another adult, unless you have put them on your emergency contact list, or you have told us in person that they will be collecting. We also do not allow our pupils to be collected by anyone under the age of 16.
Latecomers will be added to the late register, and parents will be asked to give reasons for this. Although odd occasions would not cause concern (it happens to us all!), continued lateness would impact on a pupil's learning, and in this case we would request a meeting to look for ways to improve this situation.
Absence procedures
Although we strive for good attendance, we understand that there are times when your children may be too poorly to come into school. During the worst of the Covid pandemic, children were not able to come to school with even a sniffle until tested, and this caution has had an impact on their learning. Now, with a temperature or respiratory illness, the advice is to keep them at home for three days or until the temperature is gone. Otherwise, we always recommend that you send them into school if you think they can manage the day. A good rule of thumb is, if they can play at home they can play and learn at school. We will contact you if they are not coping well, and you can always ring us during the day if you are worried. We ask that you keep them home for 48 hours after the last bout of any sickness or diarrhoea, but Please telephone or email the school on your child's first day of absence. If we do not hear from you we will try to contact you, as detailed in our safeguarding and our attendance policies. See below.
Holidays during term time
Holidays during term time are disruptive to children's education, and as such, the law is that Head teacher's are only allowed to authorise these for exceptional circumstances. This does not ever include family holidays. A good rule of thumb is to consider, could this "event" happen at another time? If it could, then we will not be able to authorise it. Very few circumstances are considered to be exceptional. Of course, there are some things that cannot be moved eg a family wedding, or a funeral. An absence request form is available for you to fill in, and should be returned ahead of the absence please. Any such absence where requests have not been submitted prior to the event will be marked as unathorised. We will respond to your request in writing. The Government have issued new guidance for September 2024, which states that neither "a parent's job not allowing them to take time off during school holidays", nor it being "less expensive to go in term-time" are considered to be exceptional circumstances.
Please see further detail in the attendance policy. Also, see link below to Penalty notices.
Penalty Notice Fines for School Attendance from 19 August 2024
Medication in school
We are able to offer medicines to pupils in school, as long as this has been properly documented and signed off by a parent or carer. Parents or carers will need to complete a medication form prior to bringing the medicine. Any prescribed medications such as antibiotics will need to have the prescribed pharmacy label with the correct child's name still attached, whereas medicines like Calpol do not need this but do need to be in their original containers.
Any items such as lip salve or barrier cream will also need to be documented on a medicine form.