Parents’ Guide to Attendance 

At Mundella Primary School, we are keen for children to achieve in all areas of their lives and for this to happen we know that children need to be in school.

The main bullet points from the new Attendance Policy are as follows:-

• Supporting the school with your child by aiming for 100% attendance each year
• Arrive in school on time before the gate closes at 8.45am.
• Avoid taking children out of school for non-urgent medical or dental appointments.
• All term time leave will be actively discouraged. Compulsory fines/penalty notices will be issued by the local authority.
• Report child’s absence daily by 9.30am by ringing the school office and reporting the child’s reason for absence as well as symptoms.
• Termly attendance and punctuality reports will be sent home to parents via email.

Following advice from the DfE and the local authority, we will adopt the following steps in an effort to support those families where attendance is an issue.

Attendance

• We will be constantly monitoring your child’s attendance. We will also be sending out termly attendance reports to parents with details of your child’s attendance percentage and lateness.
• Should your child’s attendance give us cause for concern, we will write to you to alert you to this, so that it can be improved.
• Should concerns continue, you will be invited into school to discuss this further. A meeting of different agencies that can offer support to barriers for attendance can be considered.
• If there is still no improvement the school will send a warning letter stating that when the threshold for unauthorised absence is met and a referral to the Area Legal Panel (ALP) will be made.
• Should attendance fall below 90%, this is classed as ‘Persistent Absenteeism’ (PA).

Punctuality

• We will also track lateness. This means that should your child arrive at school after the gate closes at 8.45am, they will be recorded as late. Where there is a pattern we will look to support families if there are issues.