Attendance
Flying High Attendance at St Helen's
We pride ourselves on all our children aiming to be Flying High in all areas of school life. One other area that we want to be Flying High in, is attendance.
Last year our whole school attendance was a fantastic 93.6% which, considering the factors we faced with Covid, was a good achievement! As with all areas of school life, including pupil achievement, we want to set ambitious targets for the year ahead and are again setting the high target of 97%. We will also be continuing to monitor the number of ‘broken weeks’ that children are having and are looking to improve this for the forthcoming academic year. Research shows that great attendance makes a real impact on learning and so I’d like to thank-you in advance for your support with this.
Indeed, this is also a priority for the DfE (Department for Education) who are having a huge drive to increase attendance across the country. We have always talked about the importance of attendance and we really value your support in this. Please do not take offence if we have to have any informal conversations about your child’s attendance or even if we have to go down a more formal route. Ensuring that your children are in school every day, enables them to be Flying High at St Helen’s and helps contribute to their academic and more importantly their social and personal development. Our school attendance policy can be found below and a reminder that we cannot authorise any holiday requests during term time.
The importance of attendance can be seen in the attendance diamond below:
A reminder that we cannot authorise any term time holiday requests. For those people who need to request some absence for leave time, please find the attachment below.
ABSENCE REQUEST FOR LEAVE DURING TERM TIME
Please read the following important guidance before making a request:
The current law does not give any entitlement to parents/carers to take their children on holiday during term time. Any applications for leave must be in exceptional circumstances and the head teacher must be satisfied that the
circumstances warrant the granting of leave. Absence from the school without the headteacher’s permission will be classed as unauthorised absence and may lead
to the issuing of a Penalty Notice (fine). A Penalty Notice will be issued to a parent where more than 10 sessions ofabsence are recorded in 7 school weeks (ie. 70 sessions). There are 2 sessions per day, one in the morning and one in
the afternoon.
For more information about attendance, please see the link below from South Glos Local authority.