Absence from School

Ensuring your child’s regular attendance at school is a parent/carer’s legal responsibility (section of the 1996 Education Act) and permitting absence from school that is not authorised by the school creates an offence in law.

Parents must:

• Inform the school on the first day of absence by 10am either by email or by phone (please use the absence option)
• Discuss with the tutor/class teacher any planned absences well in advance
• Support the school with their child in aiming for 100% attendance each year
• Make sure that any absence is clearly accounted for by phone or email on the first and subsequent days of absence
• Avoid taking their child out of school for non-urgent medical or dental appointments
• Only request for leave of absence if it is for an exceptional circumstance

Infectious Conditions

There are some illness which require a statutory period of absence from school. Information about these conditions can be found here.

Request for Leave of Absence

Amendments to school attendance regulations were updated and enforced from September 2013: (Pupil registration) (England)[1] regulations state that Headteachers may not grant any leave of absence during term time unless there are exceptional circumstances. It is important to note that Headteachers can determine the length of the authorised absence as well as whether absence is authorised at all. The fundamental principles for defining ‘exceptional’ are rare, significant, or unavoidable which means the event could not reasonably be scheduled at another time. There are no rules on this as circumstances vary from school to school and family to family. There is however, no legal entitlement for time off in school time to go on holiday and in the majority of cases holiday will not be authorised. Parents/Carers wishing to apply for leave of absence need to fill in an application form available from the School Office in advance and before making any travel arrangements.

If term time leave is taken without prior permission from the school, the absence will be unauthorised and, if the number of sessions absent hits the thresholds set down in Hampshire’s Code of Conduct, parents/carers will be issued with a fixed-penalty fine, or other legal action in accordance the code.

Taking holidays in term time will affect your child’s schooling as much as any other absence and we expect parents to help us by not taking children out during school time.

Late Arrival to School

The gate will be closed promptly every day at 8.55am. This means that staff may have to lock the gate while you are still in the Dropzone or approaching school. If this happens please take your child to the school office and sign them in. It is important to remember that it is not the schools’ fault if your child is late arriving at school and rudeness to school staff is never acceptable.

If you arrive after 8.55am you will need to take your child into the office and sign the late book. You will be required to provide a reason for your child being late. You must not drop your child and send them in unaccompanied. For safeguarding reasons it is essential children are handed over to school by parents.

All children have set learning tasks which they have to complete as soon as they arrive. Arriving late can also hold up the rest of the school moving on to the next part of the morning, either worship or a lesson.

Additionally children who repeatedly arrive late for school can miss considerable amounts of learning time, for example:

Arriving 5 minutes late every day adds up to over 3 days lost each year

Arriving 15 minutes late every day is the same as being absent for 2 weeks a year

If you are repeatedly arriving late there is a possibility you will be fined as part of Hampshire County Council procedures. We will raise this issue with you prior to this occurring.

[1] School attendance 2015 located at

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-attendance