Attendance

At Bordesley Green Primary we place great importance on good attendance and punctuality.

We know that a child’s attendance has a direct impact on their learning. Those children who are regularly absent from school and regularly late do not achieve their potential and do fall behind in class. Please support the school in this by ensuring that your child attends school regularly and arrives ready to learn and on time at 8.40am.

Attendance matters! It is important that your child gets to school on time and aims for 100% attendance!

Lost Learning due to Poor Attendance

The chart below identifies the possible amount of lost learning due to poor attendance. How does your child compare?

Attendance during the school yearEquals this number of days absentWhich is approx this many weeks absentWhich means this number of lessons missed
90%19 days4 weeks100 lessons
80%38 days8 weeks200 lessons
70%57 days11.5 weeks290 lessons

Frequent absence can add up to a considerable amount of lost learning and can seriously disadvantage your child in adult life.

Nationally primary pupil attendance is around 96%. This means that a child needs to attend school for at least 177 out of 190 days (no more than 7 days absence across the whole year) to meet national expectations.

Types of Absence

Every half-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.

See the School Performance Comparison website for information on our school’s absence figures.

Authorised Absences

These are mornings or afternoons away from school for a valid reason such as illness, emergency medical or dental appointments (routine appointments should always be made out of school hours) and emergencies.

Unauthorised Absences

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 to 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 to do if your child is absent from school

Contact the school office by 9am and leave a message providing a reason for the absence. Messages can be left in home language by phoning the school and then pressing 1 to access the answer phone. The message must include the full name and class of the pupil, the reason for absence (if the reason is illness, parents should include details of the illness) and the expected date of return. If the pupil is to be off school for more than one day then the parent/carer must call and leave a message on each subsequent day.

If school does not receive a notification on the morning of day one, an Intouch text message will be sent asking you to contact the school. If school has not received a response, then we will carry out a home visit on day two.

Promoting Attendance and Support

We believe that working together with parents is the best way to result in positive attendance outcomes for our children.

We have lots of high-profile rewards and systems in school to promote good attendance and punctuality with the children.

Stickers are given termly in recognition of good or better attendance with certificates being awarded to those children who also achieve this over the whole year.

We also have a weekly class attendance competition with the winning class in each phase being awarded a weekly certificate as well as a chance to play our BGPS Attendance Monopoly game and win a treat for the class. The class with the highest attendance across the whole school also receives our attendance trophy. Also keep an eye on our school Twitter page to see special announcement tweets when classes achieve 100% for the week.

Our Deputy Head/Attendance Lead is happy to work with both children and families to improve attendance and punctuality. Come and talk to us if you are having problems.

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.

Birmingham Education Authority is keen that we adopt measures and involve external agencies if the level of attendance requires us to do so. Attendance is monitored half-termly and letters are sent to all parents where attendance is below 90%.

If there is not an improvement in attendance then you may be asked to come into school for a formal meeting to discuss the matter further as part of the FastTrack to Attendance process. Continued unauthorised absences could then result in a penalty notice being issued by the Education Legal Intervention Team (ELIT) and in some cases legal action being taken.

Leave in Term Time

As a school, we are no longer allowed to authorise any requests for children to be taken out of school for a holiday during term time.

Requests for leave can only be granted in exceptional circumstances, and a holiday would not be considered exceptional. Requests for leave must also be made to the school in advance. To do this please come into the school office to complete the necessary Leave in Term Time application.

Parents may receive a penalty notice if their child is absent from school without permission.

We appreciate the challenges that some parents face when booking holidays, particularly during the school holidays. However, regular attendance at school is vital in helping children and young people to achieve their full potential and get the best possible start in life.

Punctuality

It is very important that all children arrive on time. School doors open at 8.40am every morning. If your child arrives after 8.50am then they are late and they will not be able to come into school via the usual morning entrance doors but should instead come through the main school entrance. Your child will then need to sign in using our electronic signing in system. We will then be able amend the registers and ensure your child is marked for a school dinner.

Please note that if your children arrive at school later than 9.30am, 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.

Punctuality Pyramid

Also see image above as a document: Punctuality Pyramid

For further information regarding attendance and punctuality at Bordesley Green Primary school, please see our school Attendance Policy.