to be quite upset and angry about this letter from school - dd's attendance

[Northernlurker]

Dd2 started secondary in September and since then she has had two days off on seperate occasions with minor viral unwell type things. However - two weeks ago tomorrow she fell during a PE lesson and sprained her ankle. She couldn't bear weight on it, I had to collect her from school and the following day dh took her to A&E. She was advised to try and use it as much as possible but it was terribly painful and she couldn't weight-bear for some days. In the end I went and bought her a walking stick and chauffered her to and from school for the rest of the week and she managed to attend. Before I got the stick she couldn't manage at all, was going down stairs on her bottom etc. She has had three days off. She is still in pain but soldiering on. Today is the first day she's both walked to school and home again (1.5 miles each way) in a fortnight. I followed all the school procedures for notifying absence, wrote a note, spoke to the medical room staff so they could update their records re absence from school and x-rays etc. On the Monday she was off I requested work from school in case she couldn't get back the next day and I KNOW this request was passed to the Behaviour and Attendance Manager. Today I have received a letter from that person. Amongst other things it expreses concern over her level of attendance (89.58%) and says 'I do understand that many of the absences may have been genuine'. At that point I started seeing red. We are talking about 3 absences and one of them was caused by an accident at school!
Ok I KNOW this is a standard letter and attendance is very important. None of my children have ever had problems with school attendance. I just feel really upset and actually quite resentful about this. I am also in a minor panic because dd has an orthodontics appointment on Friday morning. The appointment is at 9am so I was going to take her to school afterwards but if I do that she'll lose another registration mark won't she?

AIBU? I probably should just let it go but I'm not very good at that.

I'd send a letter back pointing out that her absence, as they well know, was due to an injury sustained on school grounds during PE whilst under their supervision.

Another professional organisation that was advocating on behalf of this family ( incidentally there were no cp concerns just incase anybody thinks they had issues with welfare staff because there were parenting issues) that mainly deals with education issues and in this area is very well respected told me after the meeting that stuff like that is not unusual apparently they had dealt with 2 families who received letters like this relating to absences after the relevant child had died.

We arrived at the meeting having already sent duplicate copies of either hospital admission paperwork,appointment cards ,hospital letters or GPS letters that covered every single absence and had already been given to the school.

The mother was told if she did not attend she would be taken to court, during the meeting the mother was directly asked what the education welfare dept could do to increase the child's attendance then asked her to sign a consent form so they could see the child's medical records.

To this day I will remember the mothers astoundingly restrained reply she said " have you discovered a cure for cancer"

Sadly the child died not long after that but the mum now works full time for the education advocacy organisation.

Sock - that is so terrible. I feel quite sick.

MrsDV - did you get letters like this for Billie?

I'm cross and upset enough about this and whilst aggravating I know it's nothing at all really. The thought of dealing with this with a seriously ill, unrecoverably ill child, is just awful.

The thing is nobody who has a child off from school with a genuine reason and where the parent/ carer has already informed the school of the reason should ever get a letter like that.

It's a bit like saying we have some parents who don't send there child to school because they can't be arsed to get out of bed or they want an older child to babysit the baby or they are to stoned so let's treat every parent like we would those parents.

Please don't think any of the above comments relate in any way to home education, I am only referring to those children who should legally be in school.

MrsDV I'm so sorry that happened.

Omg at Socks posts. Good lord what were they thinking of ??

Northern I would be furious too. A standard letter should not automatically be sent when the reasons can be so varied. They should be assessing each case individually. 'May be genuine' implies that they suspect otherwise. What a sarky comment to include.

Last year 12 out of DS's class of 22 had Chicken Pox so we all got a letter to see the head to explain the abscence. Its a letter they have to send out and follow up with a visit and be seen to do.

The head was a bit embarressed by it all but knows she has to do it. All of the parents trundled in and promised to try and avoid CP

at Sock and MrsDV's posts.

I was going to say about the time when I was called for a meeting about my severely asthmatic DS2 missing school, due to chest infections and hospital admissions, as well as the bloody orthodontist appointments! I had to provide evidence from the hospital to prove he was asthmatic so our respiratory consultant, who was head of PICU, wrote the most snotty letter I have ever read! We still get letters if his attendance drops below 90%, I just tear them up and put them in the recycling!

In light of socks and Mrs D V posts I regret my rather flippant earlier posts.

Absolutely get a response on file.

Oldraver, they do not have to send them.

They only have to send them with regard to unauthorised absence.

I would like to say I'm shocked but this kind of rubbish seems to be par for the course these days.

I had a letter earlier this year because my DD's (and she's only 8 now) attendence had fallen into 'amber alert'.

This would be because she was merrily 'bunking off' for blood tests, ECG's and MRI scans then .

Luckily she was fine but I was still fuming - I can't imagine how those parents in much situations must feel.

I would definitely write them a strongly worded letter back, especially wrt the time she had off filtering the accident at school.

I think its disgusting and wonder how they manage to get away with it. A bit cheeky too considering its you that pay their wages. I'm sorry but standard letters are wrong for whatever reason.
Institutionalised garbage.

statistical bullshit.

each period of absence is worth a greater percentage as it is the beginning of term..

ds has just started school and is ceeping towards less than 90%
I am tempted to write to the head and say that his failure to grasp statistics is why 16% of parents in the school think the management of the school is weak! (6 respondants, one negative)

I was also tempted to say that I would in future send ds in when he was being sick so that he could get his full attendnce and that the head could scrape the sick out the carpet.

I know Susan. That really annoys me too. Her % over the whole year will hopefully steadily improve. As long as she has no more accidents at school!

I feel really peeved because I've been totally reasonable about that. It was an accident. These things happen etc etc. I didn't give in to my inner daft tiger and screech 'Why have you damaged my child, you've broken her, where was your risk assessment for what she says is slippy gravel type surface' because that would plainly be stupid.

My plan is to ring tomorrow and speak to him about Friday. I am NOT cancelling an appointment she's waited 3 months for when her tooth is quite literally growing sideways but I will talk to him about how her brief absence then can be managed. I will also say that I will be sending a written response to be kept on file and that I expect the accident records to be added to that.

I wouldn't deal with them by phone. A letter has to be taken seriously and acknowledged. A phone call can be denied

The orthodontics appointment will go down as a medical mark so won't actually be classed as an 'absence'.

I work in a secondary school and from what I've seen problems can happen where a child's attendance record on SIMS isn't wholly accurate so these standard letters get sent out by admin staff when really they shouldn't be. I appreciate mistakes can be made but i think in a lot of cases admin systems and routines aren't robust enough to cope with, say, a message/letter from home about a child's health or whereabouts not reaching the person who is responsible for making sure that attendance records or accurate.

In my experience most heads of year take phone calls from concerned parents seriously so I would phone the school and speak to the head of year explaining your concerns about the letter and how it's made you feel and ask if they themselves can check the attendance marks for the relevant days to see if medical appointments/sick days are down as such and not just "no reason given for absence."

For what it's worth I know of a few circumstances where parents' own anxieties about health are projected onto their child resulting in a mollycoddled child who is off for the slightest sniffle. I suspect that schools try to root out such parents in year 7 which is why quite often letters about recorded sickness are followed up.

I wouldn't worry about it at all as you are obviously genuine but if its a good school the head of year should be happy to chat with you about it and make you feel less annoyed by it!

I would send in a very strongly worded reply. This kind of bullshit needs everyone to stand up against it. In the reply tell the Head about Friday and how you expect it to be managed. Take back some of the control here.

Some of these posts have made me so angry and some so upset. It's just bloody ridiculous and needs stamping out.

The orthodontics appointment will go down as a medical mark so won't actually be classed as an 'absence'.

My DD's hospital appointments were marked as medical - I still got a letter...

Really Dum? That's odd.

There's no point in sending out a letter for authorised absence because it's...well authorised?!

Some school's need to sort out their systems.

I'm sure they probably just hit a certain percentage and the letters go out regardless of reasons.

Although I was hugely pissed off, I really rate the Head generally and suspect it is her way of dealing with the wider issues involved so I let it ride.

Bit different under OP's circs, especially with most of the absences being caused by an accident at school.