Research suggests that students who attend school regularly could also be at less risk of getting involved in antisocial behaviour or crime. Below is a table showing how children’s percentage attendance equates to the amount of school time missed. 

Attendance during one school year	Equivalent days	Missed lessons
100%	No days or lessons missed
98%	5	35
96%	7	42
95%	9	54
90%	19	114
85%	29	174
80%	38	228
75%	48	288
70%	57	342
65%	67	402
60%	76	456
55%	86	516
50%	Severely absent

 

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Punctuality

If a child arrives late for school every day, their learning begins to suffer. Good punctuality is an excellent life-skill, and we expect all our students to arrive at school before 8:40am. For any student who arrives after 8:45am, we operate a ‘late gate’ and students will receive a sanction.

As a parent, you can help by:

• Contacting the school when your child will be absent
• Booking doctors and dentist appointments outside of school hours
• Supporting your child to attend as often as possible by reminding them of the importance of school attendance
• Ensuring your child arrives at school by 8:40am each morning

As a school, we will help by:

• Following up on every absence ensuring that no absence goes unnoticed
• Acknowledging and rewarding good attendance and punctuality
• Reminding parents and students about the importance of attendance and how it is measured against attainment
• Letting parents know if we have concerns regarding their child’s attendance and punctuality

As a student, I can help by:

• Attending school every day, on time, to give the very best chance of success
• Participating in the inter-house competitions for attendance and punctuality

We have a detention system to discourage poor punctuality. Students who are late by 30 minutes or less, are issued a next day 1hr detention. This system has proved to be effective in reducing the number of students who arrive late to school.

Arriving just 5 minutes late every day equals missing 3 days of education over the whole year.

Arriving half an hour late every day is equivalent to 19 days absence.

Arriving more than 30 minutes late = U Code =ABSENCE MARK.

Below is a table showing how being late for school every day over a school year adds up to lost learning time over one academic year. 

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What is persistent absence?

If your child takes too much time off school, they will become categorised as persistently absent (known as PA) This would be when your child’s attendance falls below 90% = persistently absent equivalent to 19 days and 114 lessons missed.

Missing school will make your child fall behind in lesson, and will impact on their academic progress and achievement.

This table shows how many days missed each half-term will make your child a PA student: 

How many days off will make your child a persistent absence student?
Half-term 1	3 ½ days off school from September until October half-term holiday.
Half-term 1-2	7 days off school from September until the Christmas holiday.
Half-term 1-3	10 days of absence from September until February half-term
Half-term 1-4	12 ½ days of absence from September until the Easter holidays.
Half-term 1-5	15 ½ days of absence from September until the Easter holidays.
Half-term 1-6	19 days of absence for the full academic year (September to end of summer term in July).