Attendance

Medical Absences

When a child has been absent from school due to illness, please ring, write or send a message on the first day of absence. There is no need to contact us again unless the absence will be protracted. A brief note is required when your child returns to school so that the cause of absence can be noted on the register. Please ensure your child is fully fit before returning to school.

Leave of  Absence

We recognise that positive behaviour and good attendance are central to raising standards and pupil attainment.

Schools are unable to authorise absence; leave can be requested only in exceptional circumstances, which has been documented by the Department for Education. The School Attendance Policy has been updated in line with the latest guidance from Solihull Local Authority. If leave is requested for exceptional circumstances an absence request form can be obtained from the school office.

For clarity, (from November 2015) where a request for leave of absence has been made and the school has sent written notification to parents that the absence will be unauthorised, a penalty notice will be issued where the trigger of 10 sessions (5 days) of unauthorised absence is met.

In all other cases of unauthorised absence accrued over time a warning letter will be issued by the Education Welfare Service prior to a penalty notice. The trigger for a warning letter will be at least 10 sessions (5 days) of unauthorised absence.

Any child with less than 90% attendance, whether authorised, unauthorised or through illness is now classed by the Department for Education as persistently absent and may require an action plan to improve attendance.

The legislation covers children of school age, therefore Reception onwards. Although not statutory, we do encourage our Nursery children to have good attendance as well.

Illness at School

Although we do the best we can, there is no really comfortable, quiet place for children to rest in school.  The normal cuts and grazes resulting from accidents at play are dealt with in school, but in cases where we suspect illness or injury, parents are contacted and pupils are cared for until someone arrives to collect them.

Please ensure that we have a telephone number where we can contact you in such cases, it is important to let the School know if these details should change.