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.

The problem with this thread is that everyone is assuming that all absences sanctioned by parents are justified. That is not the case. So regardless of whether the school know why the child is off there are still letters sent to encourage the parents to send their child to school. We see it all the time on mumsnet. People who keep their kid off school because their nan who lives nearby is visiting or because their child is a bit tired. I don't think the letters really work as people like that wouldn't take notice of a letter. Some of the cases mentioned above are shocking though - it can't take too much effort to check if a child has a life threatening illness.

Yanbu at all. We had these letters when my daughter was in hospital with e Coli and afterwards when the longer term effects meant she got unwell alot ( the effects lasted around 6 months). Her attendance went to 80% which considering how ill she was wasn't too bad!.

At first we responded with good grace providing consultants letters and proof of attendance at hospital/ doctors appointments. After a number of actually I would say quite threatening letters we started to get more upset and when we were told we HAD to attend a " meeting " with an education welfare officer it got ridiculous . This officer told us to bring her to school even when she was ill so that the school could see her and send her home. So basically we were meant to discharge her from hospital bring her in show her to the school and take her back again. Um .... No.
We moved house within weeks of this and the new school were fabulous no letters nothing but support even though the old school was supposedly great ( big waiting list to get a place etc) and the new school had a questionable reputation.

Oh and since recovering her attendance has been 98-100% each year.

A bit cheeky too considering its you that pay their wages

Ooh! A sly bit of public sector bashing.

Just went on to sch website to try to book appts for parents' eve. Confusing & useless but it did show that DS2 attendance dropped to 60% in Oct. Not a word from the school which shows that in some cases they can actually be bothered to look at records. DS1 has had 100% attendance since yr7 (now yr 10) clearly they have recognised that DS2 absences are connected with his Crohns condition & are not a result of my inability to get them up in the morning. Full marks to the school for being able to weed out the standard letters &shred them if inappropriate!

Just re-read the letter and noticed a nicely patronising line that I was too angry to note before. After saying that her absence stats are included the letter says this is 'to allow you the opportunity to see the situation ( because obiously I'm too feckless to count to 5) and why we are beginning to worry'. (my italics). Wow - they're worried? And they think I wasn't worried when my child couldn't put her foot to the floor? 5dc story is terrible too. Where does pastoral care come in to this situation

These letters really annoy me, too. I think they really alienate parents and schools should rethink their tactics.

DS2 got one before October half term because he'd had 3 consecutive days off ill and had fallen below their attendance threshold. They threatened me with an educational social worker if he missed any more days. I threw it in the bin, however, because I have been through all this already with DS1. The first time I got one of these letters, it stressed me out so much that I phoned said educational social work team to explain all DS's absences were genuine and I could prove it... And they clearly thought I was a bit mad. They don't take the letters seriously either.

So just relax, Northern, and don't waste any energy on these letters at all :)

The administration/postage/dealing with worried parents as a result of these letters etc is all costing money somewhere.

If even the dept sending them don't take them seriously, the only thing they achieve is that they unecessarily upset and alienate the parents who do care and have valid perfectly reasons for the situation.

If someone were inclined to keep a child off school for no valid reason, then knowing that these letters are essentially toothless isn't going to alter that person's outlook one jot. In targetting everyone they actually only get a reaction from people who already do care and aren't a problem in the first place

Instead of carpet bombing people with a standard letter, they should scrap that and use the saved resources to look at reasons for un-attendance on a more individual basis. That would enable them to help those who genuinely are cause for concern and butt out of situations they have no business making worse or are already in possession of the facts.

inertia made a good point earlier. Ask them what adaptations they made to help her at school after her accident

I would, in fact I do, allow my DC to be off if they have minor illnesses or are exhausted.What on earth is the point of them being there if they are not capable of learning?
We only get letters if you haven't rung in for them or if they missed registration for a reason they don't know about and haven't signed the 'late book'. Worded something like this:

'Dear Mr & Mrs X, Our attendance records show Y was absent from registration on the following occasions and we have not recorded a reason for this absence.Please would you mind filling in the reason code on the form below and returning
Many thanks for your help in this matter.....

When you write your letter of response, I'd be tempted to add the following:

"DDs most recent period of absence followed an incident on school premises. This may have been a genuine accident, please send me details of the steps you have taken to prevent similar accidents in future. I am beginning to worry that you did not take the injury to my DD sufficiently seriously"

I would be furious.

And these things need a stand taking against them, so that less people like MrsDV's son are subjected to this kind of pedantic, jobs worthy twattery.

Standard letter or not, I would hit the roof at 'I do understand that many of the absences may have been genuine'

They either accept that all absences are genuine or they directly challenge the one(s) they think are not.

my ds1 (9) has had 8 days off sick since they went back in august.
For:
a viral sore throat/cough
vomiting bug and
bad chesty cough
I ring each and every time he is off and let them know why he is off and when I expect him to be back.
If I got a letter like that I would go mad.
Properly mad.
I couldnt give a toss about school absence performance figures and ofsted. Not my problem.
If my child is ill they stay at home.
perhaps contact the LA and complain? Not that they will give a toss....

Ok so I rang because I wanted to talk to them about Friday as well. He eventually rang back and we went through the whole 'standard letter, I have no concerns' etc etc. I said how much I took exception to the 'may be genuine' bit and pointed out firmly that the majority of the absence occurred 'as you know' through an accident at school. I said I would be following up our conversation with a letter - which I will actually now e-mail as it's easier for him to add to the electronic record. He is notifying her form tutor about Friday and was generally helpful and concilatory. So I will get my views down in an e-mail and I will express my feelings about 'standard' letters and also ask, as a result of this thread, if they also send the same letter to the parents of seriously ill children and then hopefully that will be an end of it.

Good for you Northern. I do hope they take it seriously.

We've had similar letters for dd a few times now. She has multiple daytime appointments for her psoriasis, dyspraxia, hearing loss and now orthondontics on top of it all. She's just had two days off with the winter vomiting bug so wondering if we'll get another one

Some of the experiences on here are shocking - I know it's automated, I know it's standard but surely some measures can be put in place to exclude the genuine cases from such a letter?

I had a letter about 2 'unexplained' absences, when my daughter was actually in school but in rehearsals for their school production!! It wasn't just her...it was the whole bloody cast got letters!! You'd think somebody would have realised...I sent them an e-mail 'explaining'!

Dd's junior school was really bad: dd's hospital stay was marked down as unauthorised absence, and even though we supplied letters from the GP, several consultant paediatricans, the school doctor, the school nurse and the OT all explaining that she would not be able to attend school during flare-ups they still treated it as truanting.

As the Head put it in his own inimitable way: Of course we accept that corydd is ill but you can't expect us to be happy about it

The same HT gave my friends' dc permission to take time out of school to spend what might have been the last holiday with their terminally ill mother and then marked them down as unauthorised. And made things really uncomfortable for the parents of the child with CF- her attendance wasn't good enough either.

Dd's present secondary otoh is really good. I've had a couple of phone calls from KidSafe which shouldn't happen as she is on scheduled part time, but as dd herself explains that only happens when there is a supply taking the register and her friends forget to explain, so it's a genuine mistake: we can live with that.

Always check your children's attendance record...

I got the standard 'Your child's attendance for this school year has been....%'
It was above 90% so not a threatening one just we are letting you know because children's attendance is so important, etc

Anyway it was early in the academic year and I noticed that the percentage seemed low considering he had only had one morning off for a hospital appointment. I questioned it with the school (as the letter invites you to do) and the HT said 'Well he's been off for appointments...' and when i pointed out that there had only been 1 so argued that I shouldn't worry as the percentage was above 90% so I wasnt going to have 'education welfare battering down my door'...
Using my wonderful maths skills I painstaking worked out on scrap paper how one absense coulb not equate to only 91% of attendance and she (with a large sigh) opened his attendance record...

He's was recorded as absent for a WHOLE WEEK and as luck would have it she had just handed me a report from a professional who had observed him THAT week. She shat herself and then checked some other records - a WHOLE CLASS had been marked absent for a WHOLE WEEK accidently

The letter were send out again with an apology but she later thanked me as i was the ONLY parent who had noticed and checked .

I'm smiling at the implication that you were probably the only parent out of 30 or so, Doris, who actually read the letter or paid it any attention! It just goes to show they are totally pointless, as well as irritating.