To be pissed off about a snotty letter re ds's attendance?

[Whowillsaveyoursoul]

He's in year one and had four days off last term. He had a sickness bug two of the days and a chest infection the other two. The chest infection was quite nasty actually but happily tagged onto a weekend and half term otherwise he'd have missed more days than he did. Maybe they think we went on holiday?!
Anyway Aibu to think 'get lost' - what do they want me to do? Send a vomiting 5 year old into school? Send a child with asthma who can't breath properly and with a temperature of 40 into school?
Hopefully he won't have any more time off - the letter says 'whilst we appreciate there may have been valid reasons for the absences we hope we have your full cooperation to ensure there are no further absences next term.'
How would the like me to ensure that my child doesn't catch norovirus? I'm really cross!

It's an automatic letter. Ignore. He's had 4 days off in approx 10 weeks. Call it 5 days so my simple brain can do the maths and that's 1/2 a day a week on average so 90% attendance. I assume they are obliged to follow up all sub 95% attendance or similar.

As long as its not 90% for th whole year no one will care

Noble -some of these children are dc's best friends. The families are notorious for not giving a monkeys about education. Dc's Head of Year practically admitted that there are some families they've just given up on as it makes no difference, so they send letters and the officer goes round but that's about it.

I've also been a governor for years & years so know all the rules & regs and how much unpaid time & effort goes into teaching. I know that there are unnecessary things that go on in schools, so taking 30mins out to sift through the letters would save more time than that in the long run. The head of year must spend more than 30mins talking to parents that phone up about these letters.

My point is if schools know a child is hospitalised/terminal/life-threatening/SEN ill then they shouldn't be sending these letters.

It doesn't make the families feel any better & believe me both my dc & I were keen to get everything back to a normal routine, school attendance included.

It is also a complete bloody waste of time as I know if anyone tried to take me to court for my child's non-attendance they would be reprimanded by the judge as all of her attendance is authorised!

Even more annoying I have told dc's school that I will gladly meet the County Attendance Officer to talk to them about it, but got told that wasn't necessary! (I would also more than willingly go & speak to Ofsted about this nonsense when they next turn up at school.)

Hands up who thinks the school should send attendance letters to parents of children with life-threatening illnesses/life limiting conditions?

Anyone?

non attendance can be authorised but also highly suspicious.

i cant believe that ( apart from kids in Y11) families are given up on... the EWO would be sacked.

obv noble you are right - think relying on automatic letters is lazy too.

My experience is this - part of my job is to ensure attendance. We look at crap ones. We look at reasons and patterns. If there are lots of ' she had a headache' or ' he was tired from xyz the day before' and these are all single days ( often always on the same day) we do a school attendance meeting, the first part of the routine. This can sometimes be by phone, sometimes the parent doesn't turn up, so we have an informal chat with the kid.
We then set a monitoring period. If the kids attendance over those weeks isn't markedly better ( give or take illness) then it goes off to another level of meeting that will involve the EWO ( and thankfully not me)

you would be surprised how many well intentioned parents have no idea how much these one off days impact, particularly on exam level kids. They miss a lesson, they miss courseowrk or a whole question in teh GCSE.

I do agree some schools need to look at their systems wrt kids with chronic illness. I had one at work who was VERY ill yet had an amazing parent who kept us in touch and an amazing kid who achieved very well because of the work ethic of her parents.

tickle at 65% attendance it will be out of the school's hands and be being dealt with by outside agencies. I am assuming your DC has been given this confidential information by the SLT who will be those dealing with the agencies as you seem so sure no thought not.
The letter quoted by the OP us not rude or snippy or badly written - it is a formal letter covering a series of reasons hence the 'may have been ill'.

Tickle, if you've been a governor for years and years and "know that there are unnecessary things that go on in schools", I presume you, and the rest of the GB, are doing something to change that?

A formal letter should not be asking the impossible.

noble your entire post to me saying I have no idea just confirms exactly what I'm saying.

I know there is an entire industry around that does the whole 'ofstead are looking for' thing what I am saying is that it is not ofstead saying it.there are many things that settings think based on what ever gossip or advice they have heard/read but its not coming from ofstead.

The indie schools 3 of my children attend have never been downgraded from the highest rating possible and do not do anything like these letters they don't accuse parents of lying or interrogate them about the specific nature of an illness or the other weird one like banning coats they do nothing like that.

I don't understand the letter.

They strongly imply that the parent might be lying in terms of reasons for absence, which seems a bit strong.

Then they say that there must be no absences going forward.

I don't see how they can say that? People get ill, it's unavoidable. Even in the workplace sometimes people are too ill to work. Do they really want unwell children going in, at our school they say not to send them in if they are ill with eg D&V. This letter rescinds that policy then if there is one in place at the school?

I take that as no ifs, no buts, your child/ren must come in 100% no matter what. So that's what they mean, obviously. They wouldn't issue instructions that they didn't mean.

What happens with appointments, does anyone know? Are they allowed or not under this type of rule?

In our school, we ask parents to make routine or non-emergency medical appointments outside school hours where possible - this includes appointments for the dentist and optician. (However, I know when my DCs attended the orthodontist only private patients were allowed appointments outside school hours).

Where a child is given an appointment, for example at hospital or for a specialist clinic, the absence is authorised and marked with a special code for medical absence.

Yes because one of ours has clinics which are in school hours and needed an operation and that is marked as authorised absence. The other has support on school premises an hour a week so I don't think they mark that one as absence at all. I don't know how notified sickness absence for this type of thing, whether it goes down as authorised absence or a different name.

I suppose what I am wondering is when the school say "whilst we appreciate there may have been valid reasons for the absences we hope we have your full cooperation to ensure there are no further absences next term" whether they would include authorised absence in this. Because I don't know how sickness absence is categorised IYSWIM.

Where a child is given an appointment, for example at hospital or for a specialist clinic, the absence is authorised and marked with a special code for medical absence.

So if the appointment has been authorised, should those absences be included when they send out these letters?

My DD had 6 counselling sessions, all referred and organised through school. The counselling was with a charity whose offices are a couple of doors up from school so the counsellor collected DD from school and then returned her an hour later, but because of the timing it meant DD missed afternoon registration 6 times - she was in school all morning and the vast majority of the afternoon

She's had no other time off school

I had a minor rant with DH and binned it, but I'm now wondering whether the absences have been correctly coded.

It's a complicated business, omnipotent.

If a child is ill in our school, we code it as illness, which means it's authorised.

For those children who we have referred to the EWO for very low attendance which hasn't improved, even with support, they may have an attendance agreement. This could include the requirement to produce some form of evidence for all illness absence. In practice this is a minefield, but it's very hard to find an effective way to tackle this level of persistent absence.

Yes authorised absences Are included in this. They Are generic letters that cover every absence.

stinkle, those absences should have been authorised, but would still be absences.

It's a shame they couldn't have marked her as late, and not absent, for the afternoon. At a stretch they could have marked her as "educated off-site" which would not be an absence, but it's not quite true.

As it was those absences that triggered the letter, I would have done as you did and ignored the letter.

needsasock but a lot of this stuff is coming from Ofsted, through what's written in inspection reports, what Ofsted inspectors say, and what is said through the media. The consultant who told me not to use textbooks was an Ofsted inspector!

The latest thing people are trying to figure out what Ofsted are looking for is British values. A school was put in special measures because it had a sixth form Islamic society which wasn't monitored.
www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/top-london-cofe-school-failed-to-safeguard-pupils-from-islamic-extremism-9871462.html
That announcement put the wind up a lot of heads!
Then schools downgraded for being too white www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11253436/Ofsted-rural-schools-failing-to-promote-British-values.html
And the Catholic school that didn't protect from extremists (they were pretty pissed off) www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11292905/Catholics-demand-apology-after-Ofsted-makes-unsubstantiated-extremism-claim-against-school.html

Do you think Ofsted gave a shit about any of this sort of thing last year? No, it's the current fad. So of course people are trying to keep up with the whims of Ofsted. Given that they have just admitted that their judgements are unreliable www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30745018 do you think a head is going to risk getting an inspector whose 'thing' is attendance, just because other schools have got away with being slack?

Oh and independent schools are not subjected to OFSTED -
But the independent school inspectorate which is nowhere near as brutal!

Are Ofsted defining what 'British values' are?

Wouldn't it be nice if schools could concentrate on the important things, like actually teaching the children!

Not that I'm saying they aren't - before I get jumped on!!

For the cost of these automated letters and postage they could employ far more teachers or support workers.
OP you are a box that needs a tick, this is what state education has come to.

Granted some of it is but not all of it and if they really are adding fads all the time then chances are they are also not looking for things that used to be fads but now are not.

Well hold on
So all children who will have had absence - including authorised - will get a letter saying "whilst we appreciate there may have been valid reasons for the absences we hope we have your full cooperation to ensure there are no further absences next term.".

So that would mean they would expect no authorised absences including clinic appointments, hospital appointments, that sort of thing?

Cancelling all of that stuff for a child who needs it is not in the child's best interest surely. Worst case scenario it would be neglect.

So why have they said that?

What happens in the event that a literal minded parent sends their very sick child into school, or cancels vital hospital appointments, because this letter from the school tells them they must. How is that in any way beneficial. And some parents are very literal and rules based - if a school rule says X they do it. So if a letter home says "your child is not to have any absence going forward" then how do they proceed when people actually do as they have been instructed?

I mean WTAF?