More about school absence - what is lawful?

As an attendance officer, surely you're aware of the impact of missing an average of a day a week?

Agreed. I have had 2 kids go through the orthodontist, and they go every 6 weeks. At one appointment, they arrange the next, I ask for early-ish morning and late-ish afternoon...so I can take them and then drop them back after, or collect early. If that isn't possible on the exact 6 week day so be it. I would not let them miss a whole day for an appointment, that's bonkers! Do you at least ensure they're keeping up with their work at home? I'm guessing not.

One of the above kids also has about 5 or 6 days off a year for sporting events, and has still never got down close to 80%. That's an average of a day a week off school.

What are you doing to mitigate the impact this will have on their education? And why are you so surprised the school are 🙄🤔

As frustrating as it is, go to morning registration then leave. That will halve your missing sessions. A friend's daughter has had lots of very early orthodontist appointments, so she misses morning registration, but arrives just after tutor time and misses NO lessons. Her attendance is 82%, purely for missing registration. The system a farce.

Yes I know; that’s what I said.

It’s frustrating but try to remember it’s not the schools fault either. We all have to play the game a bit, you will find the school much more helpful if you do. One of my kids has a lot of hospital appointments due to a serious health condition. We always try and get the in in the morning even if it means picking up within the hour. The school really do appreciate the effort

I’m taking issue with it didn’t affect, it absolutely did. The better your grades the more choices you have. Even with 9’s and A*’s you don’t need to go to Oxbridge, but you can do almost anything. Get 4’s instead of 5’s and 6’s your opportunities are narrowing.

But nobody needs straight 9s unless they are aiming for Oxbridge, which most people aren't. My DD could probably get that if she didn't have ND issues which makes her attendance and energy levels wobbly. I will be perfectly happy of she gets a decent crop of 6-8s. And again, I'm a secondary teacher with a very academic background.

Ask your GP receptionist to send you a text reminder when you book the appointment.

Local authorities can access attendance data in real time and will call the school out, it is vital they are in this. Medical providers are used to being asked for letters for school age children, you can even screenshot the spinning texts. If you do that and get them in on time on other days their attendance will be 100%.

But now I’d ask the providers for duplicate letters, (if you don’t have a portal you can download from) it won’t take long…

Schools have a cut off time for attendance when the registers close. In my school a child who arrives after 9am is marked as late that morning. Unless there’s an accepted reason, it will be marked as U.

Surely if they have medical appointments you’d have appointment letters / emails / cards?
When I book a dentist appointment I get a text message and slip of paper with the appointment on. For hospital appointments I’ve always had proof. It sounds like you’re keeping both DC off school when one has an appointment. If so, one of them will definitely get unauthorised. I’d be booking ortho appointments either at the start or end of the school day so at least they do most of the day in school. 80% attendance over a year equates to 76 half days over a school year, which is over half a term off school. Over 5 years in secondary school that means they’re missing a full year of education.

Did they get straight 9’s? It absolutely will have affected them.

And as far as gp letters etc, if they have a medical condition that is necessitating frequent absence then the school needs to be aware of this, if the 80% attendance (which is the equivalent of missing one day per week) is for a variety of reasons you need to be considering whether it’s a genuine blip and not going to be repeated or whether you are prioritising convenience over education. Yes I did take my dd in for one hour before picking her up to go to appointments, and yes even if there was only 60 minutes left I would drop her back, she missed a lot of school for a couple of reasons but she only missed what she had to

You need to take them in if they can be there for an hour.

Yea, it matters how things are recorded in case they decide to prosecute you. They can’t ask for GP letters for illness unless they believe you’re faking it - look up the DoE guidelines. They can ask for copies of appointment letters and they won’t authorise a full day off if they child could attend for part of the day

I collected DS for a dentist appointment and took him back half an hour later and it still came up as a missed session.

Surgery is unavoidable but orthodontist appointments are not acute treatment so should be made at times where school time missed is minimal if at all, my dc saw theirs at 5pm. If they need to be seen in hospital and the clinic was in the morning, I always requested 9am so I could get them back to school in a timely manner.

If they've missed registration or arrived after registers have closed (usually 20-30 minutes after registers open depending on LEA/trust policy) they are automatically marked as absent for that session and this WILL count towards total absences. The school has no leeway in deciding that.
If they arrive late but registers are open they would get a late mark rather than absent.

It is, yes. It’s annoying because my son is down as having missed half a day and he didn’t, he was late in because our car broke down en route. Has 100% attendance apart from that. Sigh.

Both of my children have had minor surgery and then follow up appointments and as the hospital that they’re under are nowhere near school

I'd much rather they were in school but I also won’t or drop them in for one hour and then have to go back and pick up again to get to an orthodontist appointment 30 miles away etc.

I'm a bit confused, is this an orthodontist based at a hospital or are there two separate issues (i.e. the hospital is far away and the orthodontist is far away).

If it's the latter, is there not a closer orthodontist?

An 'over zealous clerk'? Really?

Seeing as that person will be completing the forms for the head to sign for referral to the local authority for penalty notices, a better attitude towards the person who is doing their job would be more productive.

80% in the first week of term isn't so bad, but by now, it should have vastly improved bar actual illness, disability or a bereavement.

it would be helpful to the kids’ education

Yes. But for absence calculation purposes, there are 2 key points in the day. So if kids are late, and miss that first registration, then it's calculated they have missed half a day- even though they may have attended all bar 20 mins of that morning.

It's this way at the 4 secondary schools my children have attended and the 3 primary schools. Yours may be different.

Helpful to who?!

Iant it awful that parents with sick children have this pressure on them ! Absolutely ridiculous

It sounds like there might be a mix of a few different kind of abscences here.

Some
unavoidable medical ones, for illness or necessary health appointments. Some for convenience, where some school would have been possible around an appointment but you / your child decided it wasn’t worth the effort, and some that are potentially for cosmetic appointments (which is what most orthodontic appointments are - not all, but most), and some from being late.

Some of those are unavoidable, some are choices being made in your household. It may be worthwhile revisiting the household view of school attendance. Is it a priority, or secondary to everything else. It might have drifted slightly further down the list because there’s been a lot happening and an adjustment might be appropriate