That the Academ Attendence rules are naff?

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My dcs infants & juniors has just lately turned into an Academy.

My dd 4 had One day of school last year due to having the winter vomiting virus: I phoned in on this day and explained she was extremely sick. The secretary said it would go done as Unauthorised under their new policy unless i provided a sick note by the Gp.
Of course i didn't take her to Gps & infect the whole surgery fgs.

Well we are now in january and i have had a patronising letter back, saying that my daughter had 2 days off last year bla bla, days off are bad for chidren's emotional wellbeing and to sign underneath to note my child was not authorised to have the day(s) off.

I went into the school office and said, what do you mean Two days off and i was told One day now counts as Two!!!

Today i found out they are fining parents for 5 days abscences, so basically 2.5 days off in reality means a fine of £35

Can they do this without drafting the policy to us first?

Just worried as my dd only needs 1.5 more days off to make me a fine candidate

I'm seething, because if she catches a bug, chicken pox, another norovirus, chest infection etc then i'm basically stuffed.
I cannot afford to pay this sort of money to the school, so i have no other choice to send them in whether sick or not

The only other option i've been given is to provide a docs note for each absence!
Bear in mind my docs charge £10 each note and aren't happy about providing them for children unless there is a long term illness.

Aibu to think these 'rules' are absurd???

Can you get her on the waiting list for other school and hope she gets a space as soon as possible, or for September at least. It sounds ridiculous.

I would be tempted, if you are fined in the future, to offer them a payment schedule of 10p per week as that is all your financial position will allow. Do they want it made payable to cash?

You cannot be fined for attendance until your child is five and compulsory school attendance is required.

In council primary schools I believe that in order to fine any parent a referral has to be made to educational welfare, attendance panels have to be attended by the EW officer school and parents (providing parents actually attend). A parental contract is then drawn up outlining expectations and reasoning behind any absences. Eg a doctors note must accompany any child's non attendance due to illness.

After this process it will be an application for a fine and the parent will have to attend court or be fined in there absence.

A magistrate delivers the fine and if EW. Are seen not to be working with parents to improve attendance and heading straight to fining parent then EW will get into trouble for frivolous convictions.

In you position I would ask for the policy and speak to the head teacher. If you child has been ill all of the absences should be authorised. I would just ask for clarification.

The academy may be trying to bring up there aveage attendance prior to an impending ofsted visit.

Hope that helps

DS1 was off sick from his school which is an academy and I got a snotty letter telling me he needs a dr's note from now on or they will refer us to education welfare.

Exactly that Dyz, it's probable, infact highly, that the crap Ofsted report they had recently has led to this.
I'm off to the school office this morning to obtain a copy of their policy. I will tell you all my findings later.

I like what meditrina said.

Where is this school? Find this hard to believe.

We've just had our policy. It is very clear one day= 2 sessions so 10 sessions in a week

Late arriving after 9:30 will show as unauthorised. I think that is fair since you cannot pick the time your child starts. Do you let them role in at 11:30 and call it attended. Should someone be sent to get the register for the late arrival?

It does say they will not do this if its an isolated event due to family issues or car breakdown etc

Sickness rules sound pathetic!!!!! GPs will not want to provide sick notes for every child. However a child who is sick regularly and they suspect is using 'sickness' to avoid unauthorised could be asked for evidence

If your child has good attendance I'd ask to meet with head and see if 'new' rules have been published, understood by everyone and applied correctly. The sickness policy is just daft if its true

I read my rules and thought they'd only be a problem to parents who didn't get DC to school on time or at all. Yours need clarification. They do sound unbelievable

my docs charge £10 each note. You're terribly unlucky. I've never heard of a GP charging for a child's sick note either

Is it me or are a lot of academies run by rubbish martinets with no sense of reality and even less teaching experience?

The academy is in Kent.
It may sound unbelievable, but yes this is totally true.
My best friend got an unauthorised for her son yesterday, even though it was the school that sent him home ill. She has to go in with a photocopied perscription from the docs today to get it changed to authorised!

I would have thought photocopying a perscription to be illegal?

And Justice, the bloke running it is a joke!
The main head of the Juniors was supposed to be becoming the Principle for whole school but for some strange reason this never formulated and we have ended up with this loser.

We had another thread where they were trying to cram 800 pupils into a 200-seat cafeteria during a relatively short lunch break, due to some rule or other that was being enforced. The desire of these people to put control freakery ahead of common sense beggars belief.

Did you sign anything to agree to these terms?

DD2 had a nasty spell of illness. I was in daily contact with the school, even spoke to the class teacher on the phone and agreed a plan of action. I took her to the doctors (both regular and OOH) in that time and organised referral to a paediatrician. I got her into school when I could. During the last week of the term, I sent her in with a temperature of 39.7© everyday.

I still got a threatening letter and when I discussed it with the head I was told that the pattern wasn't consistent with an ill child because there were isolated days -that's because she'd had such a block of time off, that I was sending her in before she was feeling well, then she was collapsing after a day back at school.

She said that DD2 couldn't possibly have had a temperature because they would have sent her home. I said 'so you think her temp was 39.7 at home, dropped during school hours, then rose to 39.7 again as she walked out of the door?' she nodded

Complete nuts.

DS1's primary school is the same and he is only in reception. It's utterly ridiculous.

"Okey doke - I'll bring her in now. I'm guessing you want her in the office with you so as to not infect the rest of the kids? Now - important question - do you want me to bring her plastic bucket or have you got some? ........ Oh no - I couldn't keep her at home - our doctors don't issue sick notes for less than 5 days and I don't want to get an u authorised. I care about my child's education."

Communicate them in writing (escalating to Cc Ofsted or similar if it persists ) repeating variants on the message: Don't. Be. Ridiculous.

Obviously vomiting should stay at home. Encouraging otherwise is to the detirement of all the children's education since they will become ill.

Our GP will also only issue a note after 5 days. Because their job is to make ill people better - not to do redundant paperwork.

If they do not trust you - as an otherwise upstanding parent - to self-certify occasional illness - then that strikes me as a catastrophic breakdown of trust between school and home. Put the shoe on the other foot: what if your chid comes home with a bruise which the school assigns to falling over in the playground. Will the school expect you to believe them, or will they provide an external professional report to validate and evidence their statement?

Well, I would be phoning my gp, explaining the situation - which is absurd - and then getting the gp practise or PCT to phone the school and point out that sick notes are not given out for absences lasting less than 5 days.

Some academies are shite and some are fantastic and inclusive just like some 'non academy' schools are shite and others are fantastic.

One of the benefits of an academy is the really small classes at ds's school.

School academies must report to someone. Governors? Who will be governed by someone... The Public Health dept might have an opinion on these school policies

That is ridiculous. My GP also charges £10 for sick notes.

My friend whose DC gets recurrent throat infections has been asked to provide a sick note each time her DC is off ill - this is despite the fact that when he returns, he is on Antibiotics, and he is under ENT and on a waiting list for a tonsillectomy.

He isn't even off a huge amount - maybe 2-3 days every half term, he is sent back as soon as the AB's kick in and he is no longer in pain and can actually eat and drink again.

And yet I wasn't asked to provide a sick note at all, by the same school, when my DS1 was off for over half of the first half term this year, first because of erythromycin resistant strep throat, and then just two days after he went back to school with that, he came down with appendicitis and had to have his appendix removed.

It seems that in our school at least, these rules only apply to some parents.

My friend isn't very 'clued up' about proper procedures, and had no clue how to argue her case, so the power crazed HT tries to insist on the £10 a throw sick notes.

The HT knows, however, that my response would be that I would happily provide a sick note as long as they would meet any costs I incur.

As they aren't going to do that, they aren't going to get a sick note!

I didn't have to provide a sick note to them for over three weeks off school - they had one for the strep throat, but ONLY because I had one anyway because I had needed it in order that DS1 could sit the alternative sitting of the 11+. I wasn't even asked for one for the appendicitis.

I would ask to see a copy of the school's attendance policies, and see if they are sticking to the published information.

I would also inform the school that I would be willing to provide a sick note as long as they are willing to cover any costs incurred.

It's a ridiculous policy, and IMO only encourages people to send infectious DC's into school, making more DC's ill.

And illness is meant to be marked as Authorised Absence anyway. Did you ring the school to inform them of your DD's absence on the first morning she was ill? You should then follow that up in writing in a short note to the school.

The school should be expecting self-certification for at least the first 5 days of any given period of sickness. No different from an ordinary workplace.

It's a waste of a GP's time to be writing sick notes for short term illnesses too.

www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/academies/b00205692/whatisanacademy

Yes, they have Governors but Governors have more authority.