Attendance

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Dear Parents/Carers

As we are now firmly into this academic year, we would like to remind you about the importance of students attending school regularly. As a school, we aim that students’ attendance is 100% across the year.

The Government defines the threshold for Persistent Absence as 90% attendance. This means that a persistent absentee child misses 10% or more of their lessons in a year. This is the equivalent of missing 3 subject lessons a week, every week. As a school, we are expected to follow up any student who falls below this attendance rate and support the student and their parents to improve upon this.

Clearly this may include students who have had a serious medical condition and, in these cases, there will already have been clear communication between home and school on a regular basis with supporting medical evidence. However, some students have sporadic absences that build up over the year

To put this in concrete terms, the following table shows the number of school days per year missed at different percentages of attendance.

Multiply this by 5, to reflect the 5 years of secondary education, and students with 95% attendance or lower across their time at the school will have missed at least 45 days (225 hours) of learning time. A student with 80% attendance will have missed the equivalent of a whole school year.

We would therefore ask that you try to ensure that your son/daughter achieves the best possible attendance this year. The Winter and Spring Terms are traditionally period of seasonal illness and, whilst we want to stress that students should not attend school if they are genuinely unfit for learning, we would ask that this is kept to the minimum required for them to recover. Please try to also arrange any medical or dental appointments for after 3:15pm whenever possible.

If there are reasons why your child is reticent to come to school, then please contact your child’s tutor in the first instance, so that we can work together to address these. If your child is ill and unable to make it to school please call our Student Absence Line (Option1) on 01932 562326 stating clearly their name, their Tutor Group and a specific reason for their absence i.e. if they are ill please state the specific illness.

Thank you in advance for your support as we work together to maximise your child’s educational achievement and progress.

Lee Jerwood
Head Teacher

Click here to access Surrey County Council's Advice for Parents