That the Academ Attendence rules are naff?

[pumpkinsweetieMasPudding]

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???

Guess what, i went into the office and they apparently "don't have it ready" "principle is in a meeting" and they will phone me later....
To which i said i will be picking it up later

I'm guessing it hasn't even been drafted. I also got asked why i wanted it

Shocking, truly shocking
Well atleast i have ruined the principles day as he will have to come up with something fast

Tell them you're going to go to the local paper with this ridiculous farce-the local rag will love this!!

Think i might lets!

I feel for you Pumpkin. The worst thing about all this is that you are wasting your precious mental energy on this instead of being able to carry on doing all the things you need to do to keep your family going and support your childrens' education. Also you have lost faith in your school which is very sad. I am scared that this is also going to happen with my kids' primary school: after an unfair Ofsted report there is talking of turning it into an academy, apparently regardless of whether anybody really agrees.
Agree with verdict of style over substance with regards to academies. Where they work it is because the head knows what they are doing so the school would have worked whether an academy or not .

Academies are all style and no substance. They don't care if your child learns a damn thing, they are not bound by any inclusion policies so any children with additional needs are left to rot and encouraged to leave. They just care about what looks good in the promotional material they dish out. this is very scary.

It's also not true for all academies feel

It's sad, as I really loved the infants & the juniors until this bloke came in.
I do feel if the other head was given a chance the academy wouldn't' be as bad

I'll get howled at for this because I'm going to mention something that everyone on here hates
As well as you're local paper -with as many parents as you can rope in- go to the Daily Mail. They lap this type of thing up and will shout it from the rooftops.
As a pp mentioned tell your GP surgery as well, leave them the Principle's name and the schools phone number. A word with him from the Doctor may change his mind about wasting NHS resources..

An incident happened on last week where my older was upset by a teacher.
Can't say exactly what happened as it will out me, but anyways the teacher apoligised to my dd, which is all well and good but I was told the principle would get back to me on the matter.....a week and a half later he still hasn't' and has even walked past me a few times since!
But he had the time to send out patronising letters regarding a one day absence...

valium is right, my Ds goes to an academy and thankfully it is run by sane people. The HT plainly loves children and the teachers go all out to look after them. The pastoral care is excellent and it has special provisions for any child with additional needs.

pumpkin - was the school forced to become an academy or did it choose to? I can see that a failing school isn't suddenly going to get better just because it changes status.

marques it was indeed a failing school......
I've not said all academies are bad, but with the wrong type of person running it, like our one, they are

pumpkin - you've been very fair in your description of the school, my concern is about the posters who are saying that acadamy is automatically bad. As I said above I'm expecting my DCs school to change in the not too distant future, it's currently a very good school and I don't expect things to change radically (I hope they don't anyway) and I wondered if the unhappiness is related to the conversion of failing schools.

Might I just say the school was "failing" due to mainly low attendance & for achieving 2% less than the government's set requirement of 60%

set requirements for maths & English

Sorry to hear that suffork
That's the other problem that the academy hasn't taken into account as i'm likely to have to send my children in ill in the future to avoid the fine, although its morally wrong and puts others at risk

Norovirus to healthy people normally has no reprucussions, but to you and those recieving cancer treatment, those with hiv, or those with low white cells are at risk or becomming seriously ill from catching it or similar illnesses/diseases

It's totally ridiculous. DS's old school (also an academy) won't let children go home with a virus unless the parents promise to take them to the GP and provide a doctor's note. Obviously I'm not going to take him to the GP for a winter vomiting bug and pay a tenner just to be told to drink lots of water!
It's like they don't recognise that you can be too ill for school without being so ill you have to see a doctor.

I'm reading this and thinking that maybe you need to approach your GP (probably the practice manager would be best) and ask them if they are aware the school is doing this. I'm sure a letter from the doctors to the school telling them not to waste GPs time with writing sick notes for children that should just be at home recovering could have more effect than a parent complaint. After all if the GP won't write a note where are you supposed to source one from

Went to office & just as i thought, still no policy to be given...,
Excuse is that principle has been very busy in meetings all day and he needs to finish drafting it up

I told them i'm worried about fines & was told not to worry...
And also told that the old school policy is null & void.
Was told if dc are ill the only proof of illness is a photocopied perscription or sick note or it will go down as unathorised. So i told them i'll send kids in ill next time as if the school sends them home, it goes authorised

Got a letter home today (standard weekly letter) saying the academy has had various enquirys regarding this matter and that as of the 21st January their procedures will to follow up absences & deal with them individually and if a distinct pattern of days off is made with no proof given, say 5 mondays in a row for example, a fine will be enforced.
Anyone who comes in after 9am will go down as unauthorised for the entire day.

Sounds like they went off and got some legal advice and were told how crap their policy is and totally unenforceable. They'll regret that thing about putting down a late start as unauthorised absence for the entire day, because their unauthorised absence stats will shoot up and will count against them.

And another thing - my DS1 who has autism reached a point when he was in a mainstream school where he was so incredibly anxious about going in that it took hours of persuasion and efforts to calm him down before he would go in. That meant he was regularly late, especially as the school was unhelpful about persuading him. If the school had tried to fine me for unauthorised absence in those circumstances, I would have put two fingers up at them.

It was mainly me making the blanket statement about academies. No it is not true that all are bad. If the school already has an excellent record it will most likely continue to be excellent and either no real difference or even improvement will be noticed.

However there does seem to be a worrying trend amongst those not on the excellent list, of turning the school into an exercise of the surreal.

Good that they're changing their policy. The principal sounds like an utter idiot. Most schools have a rule that you can't bring children in for a whole day after they've had d&v, whereas what he was doing was clearly encouraging children to come in and spread their illness around. I would never dream of taking a child (or going myself) to the GP with a sickness bug, because a) they only ever tell you to drink lots of fluids b) you'll only spread it round the surgery c) you/your child usually feels too ill to get out of bed anyway.

What everyone else said, basically.

Schools need to be careful about making empty threats they can't legally enforce. The new head at my dcs primary school tried doing this and the absenteeism, lates and going on holidays in term time increased significantly. The parents were rebelling against the new regieme, metaphorically sticking 2 fingers up at her and saying what are you going to do about it.