To think there is far to much emphasis on school attendance

[Starwisher]

My dd1 is in year 1. I got a letter telling me off the other day as her attendance has only been 92% when it should be 95% to date. Apparently the educational welfare officer will be keeping a close eye on us...

For goodness sake, dd has been ill! They know this, yet I still get the letter.

Im sick of parents smugly telling me how they just "bung a bit of calpol in the kid and chuck them in school" so they dont need to miss out on the gym or shopping.

They are the one's getting everyone else ill and causing more problems so they can avoid a sick child, yet get rewarded with attendance certificates.

I try and do the right thing and stop dd spreading bugs and getting better at home- and get in trouble.

What is with OFSTED threatening to drop a schools rating if attendance is below some target figure? What if a particular nasty bug is doing the rounds- why should a school be penalised? (Another reason why OFSTED means nothing)

Im not saying attendance is not important but its becoming ridiculous!

Tbh, I don't see why the 100% attendance thing should be run the way it is. If a child has eg a hospital appointment (and can produce the appointment card or whatever) then that should be as good as attendance, especially if the child catches up the work they have missed. And if a child is in hospital for several days then the school have to send work in, and if the child is doing that work in hospital then that is good as attendance, just offsite.

You can't make it perfect, because you can't give an OK to a kid who is off with no doctor's note, because some kids will be genuinely ill and some not. And you can't give it to kids who are in hospital but don't do the work that is set because again though some are unable to complete it, some are and don't bother. But by and large, kids with genuine long-term medical conditions should imo still be eligible for attendance awards - or there should be a parallel award for kids who would have attended if they could and have bust a gut to keep up with their peers. Tbh I think it would reinforce the school's attendance culture not undermine it: making it clear that it's not about whether you are lucky enough to not get ill, it's about your attitude to learning - which is, after all, what the whole "attendance" drive is supposed to be about.

I guess if us good parents have to be put out a little by receiving a letter and having to explain then I would rather that if it means protecting other children.

How can schools say that your child may miss out on some vital part of their education when everything gets repeated and revised, often long after the knowledge has been mastered?

I would never advocate keeping a school age child off because they were tired - if they are doing too many after school activities for them/going to bed too late/sleeping badly then perhaps that needs to be addressed first. A tired kid will never do as well as the same kid who isn't tired - it's not fair on them to expect to either.
But schools sending out threatening letters is really bad - if a kid is genuinely unwell then no responsible parent would send them into school (though my definition of 'really unwell' and the next person's might vary!)

If a school goes as far as to reward a child for having 100% attendance by letting them wear own clothes...WTF!!! That is plain ridiculous and sends the message to other child who has had a valid health reason for being off school, that they are somehow being punished for it. Pointless and unfair.

My DD starts reception this year - cannot wait for all this crap to start

Duvet days!!! You should be ashamed!

But that is the point BOM it doesn't protect anyone the letters go in the bin.

My brothers ex girlfriend doesn't sen her kids to school if she wakes up late because she thinks if she's going to get in trouble for being late then they might as well not bother. She has had the EWO visit her at home and the answer to that, move the children to a school in a different LEA.
(I found all this out as a result of discussing this subject with my mum last night).

yeah i'm at a loss as to how people think that sending these letters out protects vulnerable children.

bejeezuz, I agree you can't have 3-6 months off without affecting a child's education or affecting the provision for all children to be in school, but many dual culture families don't want to go away for months! I took my primary school children out for two weeks last year for the first time ever, before Christmas when they are doing naff all, to combine it with holiday time so they could spend an extended chunck of time in their second culture. They can't go in the summer as my husband works then, this was the only time he could take off for the next couple of years.

I consider this an extremely good use of time, and one of the only chances they have ever had to experience Christmas in this other culture with their family, and practice the language for more than one or two weeks.

The school disagreed, authorizing only one week, I have now received 5 separate letters so far for EACH child, each with about 2/3 sheets, some from the educational authority, some from the school.

It's a waste of paper, let alone a waste of time and energy. My children have had perfect attendance at all other times, plus are well-ahead in all matters of attainment. Why chase me? How on earth this approach would help some struggling mum get out of bed on time due to depression, or neglectful family who just can't be arsed to go in (I know both), I really don't know.

apart from which it's your child mumsy and it's up to you to make that call rather than the school act like you're some kind of criminal. what slightly fecks me off about it is that if you were traveller they'd be running around like blue arse flies accommodating you and your lifestyle.

Oh, I am quite shocked that families with DCs with serious and on-going health problems also get these standard absentee letters. They really are blanket letters to all irrespective of circumstances

I thought it was an oversight when we got one after a term when DS had been off more often than usual following a couple of different illnesses, including shingles.
(As I said I went in to discuss it with the deputy head and to voice my displeasure, especially as the letter mentioned "shopping trips" )

I would encourage more parents to go in and complain if on the recieving end of this sort of experience. Perhaps together, as on here, we might be able to change the culture, and raise awareness of the upset and distress this can cause.

i also find it ridiculous that you can be trusted to home school your child permanently if you have never sent them to school but you can't be trusted to say home school your child one month a year if you are a dual nationality family who needs to spend regular time in the other country.

fine protect children who are being neglected but treating all circumstances as if they are the same is ridiculous. if i took my child out of school for a week to take him away somewhere i can guarantee i'm capable of covering what they'd have done in school plus a hell of a lot more. my son has exceeded the years targets and learning already IF i desired to take him out of school for a week he would miss nothing essential and i could make sure he was learning plenty of additional stuff.

i think i just resent the level of interference full stop. fair play some children are at risk and need the state and school to be their protectors and intervene a lot - but for a healthy, happy, bright and way ahead of targets child why should a parent not be the one to decide if they want to take them out of school for a week for a trip away? whose child is it? you know? this hasn't applied to me as yet and may never do but i'd still defend my right to make decisions about my own and my child's life rather than needing to beg a school for permission.

i just do not understand why everyone rolls over and agrees to schools having this much power over their lives!?!

why should some headteacher decide when you can go on holiday? have we become such bloody lap dogs in this country?

Swallowed have you lived in different cultures then?

yes.

Swallowed, we have expressed our displeasure, both visiting the school (who are actually supportive of our desire to visit the second culture and very keen for the children to 'share' about it when they return) and having a very fun conversation with the education officer. The EO was actually bonkers and tried suggesting we take our children on and off the school roll, and got all hysterical about it. This is for 2 weeks off!

In our case, we did defy the school and the EO and did as we thought was right ourselves (and are now paying the price with a mountain of aggressive letters listing our crimes against education).

ok this is very rude i'm afraid but...

our headteacher is a horrible, patronising little man who spews gender stereotypes every time i hear him speak and seriously is just strange. the idea that i would abdicate the decision of when i could go on holiday with my child to him is ridiculous. let alone that him and the headteacher at the next school might have totally different ideas about it and arbitrarily make totally different decisions.

i've worked in schools and they can be very detached from reality which allows very 'odd' characters to rule little ponds.

the idea of giving them so much power is not appealing to me.

Me too....

Hmm I wondering if some on here can't see past this hardline mentality as they think there is only one way of doing things life... Maybe living in different cultures makes us challenge ways of thinking....

Hmm....

at crimes against education (re: against some jumped up little prick who has gotten very carried away with being head of paper clips)

And he teachers who are generally a sensible intelligent lot defend these little hitlers to the hilt, or maybe they just feel they have to in public IRS most odd.

The teachers not HE teachers

maybe that's it, hardline mentality. in my experience, the lovely school my dd goes to is just one big Babylon institution, with tighter rules, tighter goals, number punching crap.

I certianly don't agree, that if you send you child to school you should be lax about attendence. No not at all. It's when there is a blanket letter, or rule, that is effectively saying every child must adhere to the same rule, and we don't give a toss wether it's authorised or unaurthorised. We don't get that your child might actually be ill, have problems, in fact actually we as as school can't really even try to care becuase it will upset the register, and the LEA, and the government figures.

It's like the film Wall-e.

Yes, its not treating people as human.

I agree with Starwisher. Actually, the drop in attendance is not supposed to count if it is due to illness but the letters get sent all the same. I also wonder if some schools/local education authority make judgements about what kind of illness - ie if mum rings up school and says it's the first day of a bad cold, he's contagious and he's been running a high temp, so he's staying home, they count that as unauthorised absence, whereas if it's an asthmatic attack and he's been admitted to hospital it is counted as authorised. There is certainly a lot of pressure for parents to bundle a sick, miserable and contagious child into the bus/car and drop them off to sign the register, even though this 1) medically could mean a child takes 2-3 days longer to recover and during that time isn't well enough to learn much, 2) viruses get spread around the class, teachers and other parents. That was a major factor in swine flu making its rounds around children two and three years ago, and actually the swine flu threat still hasn't completely gone away.

Truancy is a different issue altogether. I think school teachers can usually tell the difference when absence is due to truancy (or when a parent does not bother to send a child in).

Perhaps an interesting question to ask here is how many days missed from school due to illness, important appointments, etc would be reasonable and whether parents are really convinced that near 100% attendance at school results in better grades, better performance in sports, better integration with peers and personal development?????

kipper Schools or LAs can't differentiate between kinds of illness - a child is either sick (in which case the code I is entered on the database) or not, in which case one of a set of other codes is used. So whoever is looking at the overall attendance sheet won't know if the illness was a bad cold or an asthma attack requiring a hospital stay - it just comes up as a row (II II II II II) on the printout. The rules on that are set by the DFE and not the school/LA. Schools can unauthorise an absence without documentary evidence if they genuinely believe that the reason for absence is untrue (eg Jimmy was supposed to be in bed with flu but he's been seen riding his bike outside the school that day) or if legal proceedings are already in progress for non-attendance, in which case no absence can be authorise as it has then become a court matter.

There's nothing to be gained from entering an unauthorised absence instead of an illness as schools are judged more harshly on unauthorised absences as opposed to authorised.

As for wondering if 'parents are really convinced that near 100% attendance at school results in better grades', research has been done on this at KS4 as I mentioned earlier, and that has shown that there is a direct correlation between attendance and achievement - with 10 days absence being the equivalent of 1 grade at GCSE.

10 days Absense pmls our maths had three years "off" the teacher never used to turn up to the lessons. Easier to blame 10 days Absense than piss poor teaching I suppose.