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Attendance
Regular attendance and punctuality are essential if pupils are to gain the most from their time at Roding. Parents/carers are responsible for ensuring that their children arrive on time every day.
A child should only be absent if they are not well enough to attend and parent/carers must telephone the school and send a letter giving a reason for any absence.
Attendance and punctuality records are checked weekly by the school’s Education Welfare Officer (EWO) who will be asked to visit families where levels of punctuality or attendance are unacceptable. Court orders and fines are now imposed on parents/carers whose children are regularly late or absent.
Leave of absence
If you wish your child to leave the school during the day for any reason e.g. to attend a clinic, a written request must be made to the school. No child will be allowed out of school without parental consent.
Time off during Term Time
Time off for holidays will not be granted in term-time. Any other requests for absence, other than dental or medical appointments, must be made in writing and may be agreed at the discretion of the Headteacher. Absences not agreed by the Headteacher will be recorded as unauthorised and remain on a pupil’s record. Redbridge authority has a zero-tolerance policy towards term time absences. As a Redbridge school Roding follows this policy and parents may be fined if they take their child out of school without the permission of the Head Teacher.
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Section 1: The importance of school attendance
7. Improving attendance is everyone’s business. The barriers to accessing education are wide and complex, both within and beyond the school gates, and are often specific to individual pupils and families. The foundation of securing good attendance is that school is a calm, orderly, safe, and supportive environment where all pupils want to be and are keen and ready to learn.
8. Some pupils find it harder than others to attend school and therefore at all stages of improving attendance, schools and partners should work with pupils and parents to remove any barriers to attendance by building strong and trusting relationships and working together to put the right support in place. Securing good attendance cannot therefore be seen in isolation, and effective practices for improvement will involve close interaction with schools’ efforts on curriculum, behaviour, bullying, special educational needs support, pastoral and mental health and wellbeing, and effective use of resources, including pupil premium. It cannot solely be the preserve of a single member of staff, or organisation, it must be a concerted effort across all teaching and nonteaching staff in school, the trust or governing body, the local authority, and other local partners. The law on school attendance and right to a full-time education
9. The law entitles every child of compulsory school age to an efficient, full-time education suitable to their age, aptitude, and any special educational need they may have. It is the legal responsibility of every parent to make sure their child receives that education either by attendance at a school or by education otherwise than at a school.
10. Where parents decide to have their child registered at school, they have an additional legal duty to ensure their child attends that school regularly. This means their child must attend every day that the school is open, except in a small number of allowable circumstances such as being too ill to attend or being given permission for an absence in advance from the school.
11. This is essential for pupils to get the most out of their school experience, including their attainment, wellbeing, and wider life chances. The pupils with the highest attainment at the end of key stage 2 and key stage 4 have higher rates of attendance over the key stage compared to those with the lowest attainment. At KS2, pupils not meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths had an overall absence rate of 4.7%, compared to 3.5% among those meeting the expected standard. Moreover, the overall absence rate of pupils not meeting the expected standard was higher than among those meeting the higher standard (4.7% compared to 2.7%). At KS4, pupils not achieving grade 9 to 4 in English and maths had an overall absence rate of 8.8%, compared to 5.2% among those achieving grade 41. The overall absence rate of pupils not achieving grade 9 to 4 was over twice as high as those achieving grade 9 to 5 (8.8% compared to 3.7%).2
12. For the most vulnerable pupils, regular attendance is also an important protective factor and the best opportunity for needs to be identified and support provided. Research has shown associations between regular absence from school and a number of extra-familial harms. This includes crime (90% of young offenders had been persistently absent)3 and serious violence (83% of knife possession offenders had been persistently absent in at least 1 of the 5 years of study)4.
