By law, all children of compulsory school age (between 5 & 16) must receive a suitable full time education.  As a parent it is your responsibility to ensure your child attends school every day.  Regular attendance at school is so important and promotes children's well being and helps them reach their full potential.  Children should be in school every day unless they are unwell or the school is closed.  

If your child is regularly absent or late they may:

• Struggle to keep up with their school work. It is hard to catch up on work once it has been missed.
• Miss out on the social side of school life. Poor attendance can affect children's ability to form and keep friendships

Setting good attendance structure from an early age will help your child later in life.  

Authorised Absence

Absences are marked in the register as either 'Authorised' or 'Unauthorised'.  An authorised absence could include the following:

• Being too unwell to attend school
• Emergency medical or dental appointments  (Please provide evidence to support the absence).
• religious events

Unauthorised absences include:

• travel during term time which have not been agreed
• absence of other siblings if one is ill 
• absence because a parent is ill
• oversleeping
• absences that have not been explained
• child/or family birthday
• day trip/shopping

Punctuality

Children's punctuality is also extremely important.  Arriving late in school can be very disruptive for your child, their teacher and the rest of the class.  If you are struggling to get your child to school on time regularly, please contact the school to see if we can help you in any way.

If your child is unwell and unable to attend school, please telephone the school on 01843 862035 and report the absence before 9.30 am.  If your child is absent too often, then the school may investigate to see why this is happening.

Holidays in Term Time

Family holidays and your child's education

Department for Education (DfE) changes to The Education (Pupil Registration)(England)Regulations 2006 have removed all reference to family holiday and extended leave as well as the statutory threshold of ten school days.

Headteachers are unable to agree leave of absence during term time unless they are satisfied there are exceptional circumstances.

Should absence be agreed, headteachers can specify the number of days a pupil will be allowed to be absent from school.

Where leave of absence is not agreed and you take your child out of school or your child is away longer than was agreed or you have not applied in advance, the school will record the absence as unauthorised.
Headteachers cannot give retrospective approval.

If you take term-time leave of absence for a holiday that has not been authorised, your child’s school may ask the Local Authority to issue you with a Penalty Notice.

Penalty Notices are issued to each parent for each child who is absent without the agreement of the headteacher.

Penalty Notices carry a fine of £60 per parent per child if paid within 21 days, increasing to £120 per parent per child if paid between 22- 28 days.

There is no right of appeal against the issuing of a Penalty Notice because the authorisation of absence is the sole responsibility of the head teacher.

Should you not pay the Penalty Notice(s), the Local Authority may consider taking legal action under Section 444(1) Education Act 1996 for failure to ensure your child’s regular attendance at school.
If this happens, your case will take place before magistrates who could issue the maximum fine of £1000 per parent per child for this offence.

If you need to request a leave of absence please complete the form below and return to the school office: