To think that if schools are so hot on attendance figures they ought not to randomly mark my children absent

[dealer]

So now, after sending home piles of gumpf about initiatives etc on attendance, they now send home detailed attendance run-downs each term. Both the primary and secondary have started doing this.

So first I receive ds's (yr10). It is green (good) and says his attendance is 100%, and then gives me hints on how to improve this. It then gives me a detailed list for each subject. Although his overall attendance is 100%, some of the lessons show as low as 60%. Does this mean he's bunking lessons? It seems unlikely, but 15yos get up to stuff, so I try to query but get no response from the school. Ds reckons they just don't call the register all the time. There are also loads of weird symbols on his depicting absence for religious reasons and stuff, also some days where he is marked present twice.

Then I get dd2's (reception). She was absent on the first of school, due to vomiting. But it also shows her being ill on the next Monday too. This did not happen.

Then dd1's (y5). She has been marked as ill one afternoon in October. This did not happen. Neither her teacher, nor the office staff can remember us being contacted to collect her. She has had 4 years 100% attendance, and was hoping to get a trophy if she reached 5 years like a lad got last year. I massively don't agree with these awards, but since they happen dd2 is very annoyed that she has been marked absent and can't get the trophy now.

FFS, what is the bloody point in trying to communicate this stuff to the parents if they can't make it accurate? And the primary school is always telling us they have to get their overall attendance up to such an amount, and then they randomly lose .8% on dd1 and 1.6% on dd2. Quite a bit at this time of year.

oh its very random, ds3 came home with a 100% attendance certificate for this term, ie sept till dec, but i KNOW he has had at least one if not two or three days off poorly, hey ho, i cant be arsed mentioning it.

I would suggest your eldest is having you on and is bunking the lessons he doesn't like. Ask the school for a full attendance record to see if you can track what he is bunking.

I've asked the school generally via the office and have no response.

So I've emailed personally some of the teachers, none of them can remember him being absent at all. He's a straight 'a' student and is doing most GCSEs a year early, so although it's not impossible I would hope the school would tell me if he weren't attending lessons.

Sometimes in a busy lesson with 30+ pupils mistakes can be made and often if one teacher makes that mistake the other teachers may still mark pupil absent for whole day even though they are in.

Fair enough, but all 3 kids are wrong.
The primary's to the detriment of their attendance figures which they are apparently so worried about

Could it be that the subjects with no marks are subjects like PE or others that aren't classroom based? Most registers are taken on the computer but occasionally a register will not be taken if there is an IT problem or if a class is displaced. Most teachers will also do the register at the start of the lesson so if a student is late they will be marked absent. They should correct it and change it to a "L" mark but quite often there is so much else to do that it just gets forgotten about. This is quite irritating as a form tutor when I'm questioning pupils on where they were during that period and they inform me that they were just late.

As far as the being marked ill in the afternoon this can often be because a pupil has gone to the medical room and you have been informed that they are to be sent home. At this point you mark them "I" as you haven't seen them but know where they are. If at that point they don't go home say because a parent can't be contacted then nobody tells the form teacher and nobody changes the mark. In my school at least I often find the office send pupils home without marking in the register as ill which makes more faffing around for me as a tutor.

Tbh I think it is poor that your DC school has sent home the detailed analysis as they must know the system isn't perfect and is only going to cause parents to become confused. I have some wonderful students who have 100% attendance in school but not in my class as they are often out of my class due to school performances, trips, events or anything they want a respectable student to do. This means they do not have 100% attendance in my class but if you questioned me on who and when it would be impossible to answer as I have more important things to remember than exactly who was in a particular class each day- that is what a register is for.

I really wouldn't stress it.

The whole system is dependent upon register stats and other data being (a) acquired properly, and (b) being inputted onto the school computerised system.

I've been contacted four times in three years to say my DD was absent from school. She wasn't. The school fucked up.

The first two times I crapped myself. The third time I was mildly concerned. The fourth time I was just irritated.

I agree... I personally feel it is a lack of communication within the school. Yesterday I marked 2 students absent as I hadn't seen them. They were in fact in the band on the stage. Wouldn't you expect someone to have told me? Nope. I marked them absent and a truancy call went home. I had 2 worried parents as they had sent their children to school that morning.

my dd had 12 weeks of hospital treatment last year which meant she was half an hour late for school

I informed the school prior to her starting the treatment, the teacher commented several times about the fact that the treatment seemed to be working (photo therapy for eczema) and the office staff would ask how she had got on at the hospital when I signed her in

got her report at the end of the summer term and it had all been marked down as late or unauthorised absence so her percentage was awful

she didn't miss any other sessions but got a comment from the head saying that her attendance needed to improve

I don't think the left hand knows what the right hand is doing sometimes

And wouldn't you think, with Ofsted ratings being very dependent upon attendance stats, that schools would bother to get them right in their own favour?

If schools fuck up on attendance and standards, their Ofsted grading is stuffed, no matter how marvellous everything else might be.

I've had this happen very occasionally and rang in to get it sorted, but your school seems exceptionally bad at record keeping, OP

I've has this happen on many occasion. Years ago when DSD was 12 and in Year 7 I had a phone call one lunchtime from her head of year asking why DSD wasn't in school as I hadn't rang. Was news to me as she'd gone to school that day. So when she came home we gave her a right bollocking for bunking off. She was in tears adamant that she hadn't. So convinced was she that she'd been in school that I said I would speak to her teacher the next day to confirm, totally not believing DSD for 1 minute. I rang her head of year the next day and she said very breezily "Oh yes, she was in it was a mistake on the register," The poor girl had been in tears all night and we'd grounded her for something she hadn't done. I suggested to the teacher that maybe they should check their registers properly in future before ringing parents as she'd caused a young girl a lot of upset for nothing and maybe should apologise to her.

Give the teacher her due, she did apologise to DSD. After that I take all attendance records with a pinch of salt and pay no attention to them!

grrr attendence STUFF just makes me . dd1 got her picture taken for 100% attendence but her reprort said 96.3% what ? dont get it , sometimes the teachers dont take a register , maybe your son is elsewhere in school . Pay no attention to it i do ,

i have had to contact the school ds1 was maked as not in 1 afternoon for no reason,the day it happend he had been punched and was sat with his head of house all afternoon,3 times its taken me to get it sorted!

We had one child marked as '100% absence' one term. In fact, he attends a special needs base and goes into school from there, but there doesn't appear to be a box for that on the school's forms.

I have had several calls/texts from 2 of Dc's school asking why they weren't in school.

i tell you what, it put's the fear of god into you when they tell you your 6 year old isn't there....when in fact you know that they arrived safely. You start thinking allsorts.

Also got a text recently, from DS's school asking why he wasn't in. I phone the school and was told oh it's ok he's here and transpired the computers had gone down that morning and the whole school had to sign in manually. So rather than half the kids being late, were told to go straight on to lessons.

The receptionist told me the phone hadn't stopped ringing that day due to worried parents wanting to know where thier kids were, as they were all sent the same text. Will wait and see if it was marked down as an absence.

I now always tell them to double check and physically find out if they are where they are supposed to be and phone me back.

I agree with LineRunner. It's a pathetic over-reliance on computer systems that causes the problems. Someone doesn't enter the data in correctly, and they print out the attendance sheet without anyone checking to see whether it makes any sense and send it off. Garbage in, Garbage Out, as the old saying goes.