Regular attendance at School is essential in order for children to make progress; form/maintain strong friendships and benefit fully from the opportunities available to them. Our school's policy on attendance can be found on the 'Policies' page of this website.

The following information is a summary of the Local Authority's advice to Parents relating to School attendance. The full commentary is available here.

By law, all children of compulsory school age (normally five to 16) must receive a suitable full-time education. As a parent, you have a legal responsibility to make sure this happens – either by registering your child at a school or by making other arrangements to give them a suitable, full-time education. Once your child is registered at a school, you are legally responsible for making sure they attend regularly. This means your child should not have sessions of unauthorised absence.

Education law states that parents do not have a right to take their child out of school for a holiday during term time. Only in exceptional circumstances may a headteacher grant permission for leave; and it is the headteacher's decision on whether the absence is exceptional and how many days to approve.

Parents/carers who take their child out of school without the absence being agreed and authorised by written permission from the school can be issued with a penalty fine.

Absence/Late Procedures

On occasion, for example due to illness, absence from school is unavoidable. If your child will not be in school for any reason, or you know they will be late and/or need to leave early on a particular day, please telephone the school office (01590 674383). All absences need to be phoned in by 10.00am or an unauthorised absence will be recorded

Should the office staff be unable to answer for any reason, please leave a message on the dedicated absence line on the school's answering machine. 

For reasons of Safeguarding, the school has to account for all absent children. As such, if we are not notified of absence in a timely way as outlined above, we may have to inform external partner agencies to investigate where your child is.

If in any doubt, please check the NHS website or speak to a member of the office staff.