Being in school and having the best attendance possible underpins all the many benefits of school for your child, such as their learning, wellbeing and wider development. We want to work with you to ensure that attendance for pupils at the Bridges Federation is the best it can be. Every school day counts.
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No days missed 100% Excellent BEST CHANCE OF SUCCESS! |
7 days missed 96% Good OFF TO A FLYING START! |
11 days missed 94% Satisfactory LESS CHANCE OF SUCCESS |
15 days missed 92% Unsatisfactory HARDER TO MAKE PROGRESS |
More than 18 days missed Below 90% Poor Your child is missing out |
- Your child is too ill to go to school.
- You have permission for a leave of absence from your child’s school for them not to attend. You should only ask for this in exceptional circumstances. Generally, a holiday will not be classed as an exceptional circumstance.
- Your religious body has a day especially for religious observance.
Children earn points for their class towards a termly medal for good attendance and punctuality. Each half term children can work towards a different coloured wristband for 100% attendance and punctuality, with a special rainbow wristband for those who manage 100% for the whole academic year. All families with 98% attendance or better are entered into a half termly raffle to win a hamper of goodies.
Specifically, parents should:
- Inform the school in advance if they expect a child to be absent for any reason
- Inform the school if they need to pick their child up from school early
- Contact the school on the first day of absence, usually by phone or using the school App, to report their absence. They should do this before 9.30am.
- Send a note/email or App message giving the reasons for absence when a child returns to school (if they omitted to contact the school beforehand)
- Telephone the school if they are unavoidably delayed in picking up a child from school
- Make sure the school has correct addresses and phone numbers
- Ensure the school has names, addresses and phone numbers of at least 3 people who can be contacted in an emergency
- If requesting term-time or special leave they must complete a request form which is considered by the Leadership Team.
Frequently Asked Questions
My child is ill. What should I do?
If your child is ill, read the NHS’s ‘Is my child too ill for school?’ advice to help you decide whether they can go to school. Contact us as soon as possible to let us know that they will be absent.
Do I need to provide medical evidence to support my child’s illness related absence?
We may ask for medical evidence when your child is absent due to illness. This may be in cases where:
- Your child is regularly absent due to illness, to assess how we can help by putting support in place.
- We have reason to believe your child was not too ill to attend and a conversation has not resolved the issue.
If you are asked to provide evidence this does not need to be a letter from your doctor or consultant, and doctors will not usually provide such letters. It can, instead, be appointment cards, prescriptions, or notes of previous consultations (including from the NHS App.)
To avoid disruption to your child’s attendance, medical and dental appointments should not be booked during the school day whenever reasonably possible.
My child is struggling to attend school. What can I do?
The first step is to talk to us about why your child is missing school, and what help we can give. You should still do everything you can to help your child attend as much as possible whilst waiting for help and support to be put into place. Information on who you can contact for help, including the school’s senior leader responsible for attendance, can be found in our attendance policy on the website. We follow the expectations laid out in the DfE guidance ‘Working together to improve school attendance.’
For further information on all of the above please see our federation attendance policy.