Don’t miss a moment of the greatest years of your life!

At Moor End Community Primary School we know that regular attendance is directly linked to raising achievement and develops skills for life and work. Please support the school in this by ensuring that your child attends school regularly and arrives ready to learn and on time at 8.45 am.

Analysis of the KS2 SAT’s clearly shows that the children regularly late score LOWER than those children who complete their EARLY BIRD everyday.

Being 20 minutes late every day means you miss 100 minutes of Maths every week. Multiply this by 39 weeks a year = 3900 minutes missed a year. Basically this is 65 hours missed a year!

Attendance Matters
Primary national pupil attendance was around 96% pre COVID. This means that a child needs to attend school for at least 177 out of 190 days to meet national expectations.

Going to school regularly is important for your child’s future. Parents are responsible for making sure their children receive full-time education. Talking to your child and their teachers could help solve any problems if your child does not want to go to school.

Regular school attendance

Good attendance shows secondary schools and future potential employers that your child is reliable.

Moor End Primary school records details of all children’s attendance and absence at school. We do so at the beginning of morning and afternoon sessions. If your child is absent, you must tell the school why immediately.

The school will record the absence; the Local Authority will receive this information for each child. The Department of Education also receives annual attendance data for the school.

Your responsibilities as a parent

By law, all children of compulsory school age must receive a suitable full-time education. For most parents, this means registering their child at a school – though some choose to make other arrangements to provide a suitable, full-time education.

Once your child is registered at Moor End Primary School, the parent is legally responsible for making sure they attend on a regular basis.  If your child does not attend school on a regular basis you could get fined or be prosecuted in court.

How to prevent your child from missing school

You can help prevent your child missing school by:

> making sure they understand the importance of good attendance and punctuality

> taking an interest in their education – ask about school work and encourage them to get involved in school activities

discussing any problems they may have at school and letting their teacher or Headteacher know about anything serious

> not letting them take time off school for minor ailments – particularly those which would not prevent you from going to work

To avoid disrupting your child’s education, you should arrange appointments and outings:

after school hours

at weekends

during school holidays

You should not expect Moor End Primary School to agree to your child going on holiday during term time.

Support on school attendance

A child’s school attendance can be affected if there are problems with:

bullying

housing or care arrangements

transport to and from school

work and money

If your child starts missing school, you might not know there is a problem.  When you find out, ask your child and then approach their teacher or the school attendance team.

Understanding types of absence

Every ½ day absence from school, by law, has to be classified as either authorised or unauthorised. This is why information about the cause of absence is always asked for.

Authorised absences are mornings or afternoons away from school for a good reason such as illness, medical appointments and emergencies.

An absence is classified as Unauthorised, if the reason was not recognised as acceptable. The Department for Education (DfE) and Local Education Authorities provide information for schools as what is acceptable and what is not.

Examples of reasons that would not be accepted:

A birthday
A shopping trip
Day trips
Holidays – unless have been agreed as exceptional circumstances

What should I do if my child is absent from school?
Contact the school office on the first morning before and notify us of the absence and provide a reason.
School will phone on Day 1 of an absence and do a home visit after 2 days.

Punctuality
It is very important that all children arrive on time. If your child arrives late, they will not be able to come into school via usual morning entrance doors but should instead come through the main school entrance. We will then be able to mark registers and ensure your child is marked for a school dinner.

Please note that if your children arrives at school later than 9:30, we are required to mark them as absent for that half day session.

If children are regularly late, a parent will be expected to attend a meeting to look at how punctuality can be improved.

Attendance Monitoring
As attendance and punctuality is so important to us, we cannot be complacent where there are instances of unacceptable, low pupil attendance, or if pupils are regularly late to school.

DFE: Working Together To Improve Attendance 2022.

From September 2022 the DFE: Working Together To Improve Attendance paper will replace all previous guidance on school attendance except for statutory guidance for parental responsibility measures.  The Secretary of State has committed to it becoming statutory when parliamentary time allows (this will be no sooner than September 2023).