Attendance
Attendance Information & Guidance for Families
Working Together to Improve Attendance!
What is good attendance?
This is Pupil A who has 90% attendance
Is this good?
What does this mean?
The pupil’s family think this is a good attendance record. Do you agree?
90% attendance = 1/2 day missed EVERY WEEK or 4 WEEKS of missed lessons!
So, 90% is not as good as it first seems!
Attendance Percentages and what they mean…..
- The school year is made up of 190 days.
- 100% attendance = 190 days
- 90% attendance = 19 days absent
- 85% attendance = 29 days absent = 6 weeks (approximately 1 term)
- 75% attendance = 47 days absent = approximately 10 weeks
Your child’s absence will not only have an effect on their education but can also have an effect on their friendship groups and their social and emotional skills.
If you have any issues regarding attendance or lateness, please talk to us, we are here to help and support families and pupils. There is always a solution but if we are not aware of the problem we cannot help provide strategies to resolve the difficulty.
Meadowfield School Attendance
- Pupils should be on school grounds and ready to go into school at 9.00am. Both sets of gates remain open until 9.20am.
- If your child arrives after the gates have closed, please come into the main Reception. The time that they arrive is logged and you will be asked for a reason for the lateness. This is recorded in the register.
- If your child arrives between 9.15am - 9.30am they will be marked in the register as an L Code for late and the number of minutes that they are late will be recorded, together with the reason.
- If your child arrives after 9.30am and there is no valid reason e.g. medical apt, the register will be marked as U (unauthorised). This change of coding reflects the legal requirement that the register closes at 9:30am.
- If a child arrives after 9.15am this causes disruption to the class, with a staff member being required to leave the class to collect the pupil from reception. Please note that the dinner register will have been sent to the kitchen so our receptionist will ask if your child requires a school dinner.
Our cohort requires pupils to be accompanied from the car park to class and this can cause a delay in the pupil arriving into class, therefore a pupil who is in the car park at 9.00am but arrives in class via the primary or secondary gate will not be coded as late. However, a pupil who arrives after the primary/secondary gates close and enters via reception will be coded L or U.
Please remember we are asking for this information not to judge but to comply with the statutory requirements to record attendance accurately.
If you are running late, please ring the main school number 01795 477788 or for 6th Form 01795 342147. This provides us with the opportunity to let the appropriate staff know to expect you and your child together with your expected arrival time; thereby hopefully limiting the disruption to the class and your wait time to be collected from reception.
It is a legal requirement that the school records all attendance and absence. The registers are checked twice daily morning and afternoon to track pupils for attendance and safeguarding reasons.
The DfE and LA have an expectation that all schools should achieve at least 96% attendance for all pupils including those in special schools. Meadowfield is committed to striving to achieve this expectation.
It is the responsibility of parents/carers to contact the school on the first day of their child’s absence.
If your child has not been marked in the register and we have not heard from you, the School Office will telephone to ascertain the reason for the absence.
If your child is going to be off longer than one day, you do not need to ring every day, but if they are absent for more than 3 days, the school will contact you for an update on their condition and the family wellbeing. It is appreciated if you could contact the school on day 3 to keep us informed and advise of an expected return date. Dependent on the reason why your child has been absent they may require a ‘Return to School’ meeting.
We will keep trying to contact parents/carers to ascertain the reason for an absence. If after 2 weeks we have been unable to make contact, we will mark the register with an O Code, which is an unauthorised absence.
If your child needs to have time off for a planned absence e.g. medical apt, could the appointment letter please be sent to the School Office for our records.
If you would like time off during term time, please put your request in writing together with clear reasons why you need to take your child out of school during term time. Please note that although we appreciate many of the reasons why parents wish to take children out of school, we are limited by legislation to only grant permission in exceptional circumstances. Please see our Attendance Policy, which is available from our school website for further information and guidance.
As part of the DfE Attendance regulations, we will provide parents/carers with their child’s attendance 2 times a year via a print out of their Registration Certificate. An accompanying letter will explain where your child’s attendance currently sits in terms of DfE expectation.
Monitoring, Recording and Action Procedures
- Daily recording of attendance on SIMS & tracker logs.
- Dedicated Attendance line for absence reporting via telephone, Weduc or email for families.
- First day contact with parents/carers where a pupil is not in school and there has been no contact with the family.
- Contact letters where communication has not been possible over the telephone, text or email.
- Termly attendance is reviewed with the Senior Attendance Champion and Assistant Principals.
- Where pupils are below 95% attendance, depending on the reason for the absences, we follow a 6-stage system to try and work with families to overcome the barriers to attendance. The stages can be found in our Attendance Policy and summary Attendance Statement.
At all stages of our attendance procedures the school will work with and support families and pupils to ensure that help, support and guidance are being offered to facilitate school attendance.
Depending on the reasons why attendance is below the expected level or is not improving, the stages of attendance action protocols can be changed to benefit the pupil. We understand that some pupils have complex medical conditions and these will always be taken into consideration with regards to attendance.
Who is responsible for Attendance
The Senior Attendance Champion, Liz Hymus has overall responsibility for attendance. Liz can be contacted via the office telephone or email.
On a daily basis our Attendance Officers are:
- Main site, Sunny Bank and Fulston satellites - Emma Parrish, please do not hesitate to contact Emma on 01795 477788
- 6th Form - Kathryn Plowman & Jo Budgen, please do not hesitate to contact Kathryn or Jo on 01795 342147.
- The Attendance Officers are supported by Ginny Cosstick, Ginny can be contacted via 01795 477788 or via email, office@meadowfield.kent.sch.uk
- We have a dedicated Wellbeing team, Mark, Gemma and Katie, please do not hesitate to contact the Wellbeing team on 01795 477788
The school day is:
Meadowfield, Sunny Bank & Fulston Satellites
Monday—Thursday 9.00am—3.00pm
6th Form Monday—Thursday 9.00am—3.10pm
Above sites except Fulston Friday 9.00am—1:30pm
Fulston Friday 9.00am—1.15pm
We promote a positive, strong ethos to attendance,
every day counts!
All our procedures and monitoring protocols are designed to ensure that, every child & their family matter!