Attendance

It is widely known that the link between a pupil’s attendance and attainment is evident. Early poor attendance habits follow through into secondary school and employment. Any pupil’s absence disrupts teaching routines so may affect the learning of others in the same class. Ensuring your child’s regular attendance at school (above 96% attendance) is your legal responsibility and permitting absence from school without a good reason creates an offence in law and may result in prosecution. 

Helping to create a pattern of regular attendance is everybody’s responsibility - parents, pupils and all members of school staff.  In May 2022, the Government issued a new document - 'Working together to improve school attendance.'  This document outlines the importance of children attending school, and makes the responsibilities of all involved in a childs education clear, including parental responsibility: 

"It is the legal responsibility of every parent to make sure their child receives that education either by attendance at a school or by education otherwise than at a school."

"Where parents decide to have their child registered at school, they have an additional legal duty to ensure their child attends that school regularly. This means their child must attend every day that the school is open, except in a small number of allowable circumstances such as being too ill to attend or being given permission for an absence in advance from the school."

Attendance at NFIS

As a school we actively promote excellent attendance and will look to support and challenge weaker attendance, this includes punctuality.  We encourage each child to achieve excellent attendance with a wide range of incentive awards outlined further down this page.  Excellent attendance is the essential foundation to positive outcomes for all pupils including their safeguarding and welfare.

The Department for Education state that;

"The law entitles every child of compulsory school age to an efficient, full-time education suitable to their age, aptitude, and any special educational need they may have. It is the legal responsibility of every parent to make sure their child receives that education either by attendance at a school or by education otherwise than at a school.

Where parents decide to have their child registered at school, they have an additional legal duty to ensure their child attends that school regularly. This means their child must attend every day that the school is open, except in a small number of allowable circumstances such as being too ill to attend or being given permission for an absence in advance from the school."

"The most effective schools consistently promote the benefits of good attendance at school and make schools a place pupils want to be, set high expectations for every pupil, communicate those expectations clearly and consistently to pupils and parents, systematically analyse their data to identify patterns to target their improvement efforts, and work effectively with the local authority and other local partners to overcome barriers to attendance. They also recognise that attendance cannot be seen in isolation and that the foundation to good attendance is a calm, orderly, safe and supportive environment in which all pupils can learn and thrive. To manage and improve attendance effectively, all schools are expected to:

• Build strong relationships and work jointly with families, listening to and understanding barriers to attendance and working in partnership with families to remove them.
• Develop and maintain a whole school culture that promotes the benefits of high attendance.
• Have a clear school attendance policy which all staff, pupils and parents understand.
• Accurately complete admission and, with the exception of schools where all pupils are boarders, attendance registers and have effective day to day processes in place to follow-up absence.
• Regularly monitor and analyse attendance and absence data to identify pupils or cohorts that require support with their attendance and put effective strategies in place.
• Share information and work collaboratively with other schools in the area, local authorities, and other partners where a pupil’s absence is at risk of becoming persistent or severe.
• Be particularly mindful of pupils absent from school due to mental or physical ill health or their special educational needs and/or disabilities, and provide them with additional support.

Fixed Penalty Notices

A fixed penalty notice will be issued once the national threshold has been met and can be issued for term time leave or irregular attendance/punctuality. The threshold is 10 sessions of unauthorised absence in a rolling period of 10 school weeks. A school week means any week in which there is at least one school session. This can be met with any combination of unauthorised absence (e.g. 4 sessions of holiday taken in term time plus 6 sessions of arriving late after the register closes all within 10 school weeks). These sessions can be consecutive (e.g. 10 sessions of holiday in one week) or not (e.g. 6 sessions of unauthorised absence taken in 1 week and 1 per week for the next 4 weeks). The period of 10 school weeks can also span different terms or school years (e.g. 2 sessions of unauthorised absence in the Summer Term and a further 8 within the Autumn Term).

Exceptional circumstances: All schools can grant a leave of absence for exceptional circumstances at their discretion. Generally, the DfE does not consider a need or desire for a holiday or other absence for the purpose of leisure and recreation to be an exceptional circumstance.

To see Hampshire's guidance for penalty notices, please click here

What to do if your child is unwell

It can be tricky deciding whether or not to keep your child off school when they're unwell.

To avoid outbreaks of infectious illnesses please do not bring your child to school if they are unwell. If you do keep your child at home, it's important to phone the school on the first day to let us know that your child won't be in and give us the reason. If your child becomes unwell whilst they are here, we will contact you to arrange for them to be collected by someone listed on their contact form.

Sickness and/or Diarrhoea 

Children who have had a bout of sickness or diarrhoea will need to stay off school for 48hrs from the last episode. 

Colds and Coughs

It's fine to send your child to school with a minor cough or common cold. But if they have a fever, keep them off school until the fever goes.

Encourage your child to throw away any used tissues and to wash their hands regularly.

Chickenpox

If your child has chickenpox, keep them off school until all the spots have crusted over.

This is usually about 5 days after the spots first appeared.

Head lice and nits

There's no need to keep your child off school if they have head lice.

You can treat head lice and nits without seeing a GP.

Scarlet fever

If your child has scarlet fever, they'll need treatment with antibiotics from a GP. Otherwise they'll be infectious for 2 to 3 weeks.

Your child can go back to school 24 hours after starting antibiotics.

Slapped Cheek Syndrome

You don't need to keep your child off school, once the rash appears, they're no longer infectious.

Sore Throat

You can still send your child to school if they have a sore throat. But if they also have a high temperature, they should stay at home until it goes away.

A sore throat and a high temperature can be symptoms of tonsillitis.