To think that this jobsworth of a headteacher is a spiteful idiot?

[GlitteryRollers]

I know it's in the Daily Mail, and these school bashing stories are usually rubbish. But I'm pretty shocked by this one.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3363790/Boy-5-banned-attending-end-term-cinema-trip-classmates-poor-attendance-run-spend-two-weeks-off.html

What a nasty, spiteful cow! I'd be pulling my child out of that school ASAP. "Exceptions can't be made"? He was run over by a car you cruel bitch. Was he supposed to attend school when he was in hospital?

Why is it that so many headteachers seem to lack basic empathy and common sense these days? Even my very strict andy terrifying old primary school head wouldnt have done something so bloody mean.

My friend's dds school had a non uniform day for those with 100%.

I thought it was stupid. I advised her to let her dd have a no school day.

I wonder how they approach this with traveler children.

Of course, the ideal is that children all attend school except when they are too unwell. And the massive majority of MN children, whose parents are very engaged with education, ensure their kids have the best attendance possible.

There are, however, a good proportion of the population who are either ambivalent and disinterested in education, or actively negative towards it. They don't think twice about ringing up to tell the school that their child is sick when that is not the case. The difficulty is that although schools might "know" who those parents are, they have to prove it. How do schools actually know if a child has been sick or not. They don't.

We get attendance records from primaries transferring showing kids taking a day off a week. Different excuses each time. There isn't enough education welfare services in the world to keep on top of the lies that are told.

Under the circumstances the Head Teacher did not show wisdom in this case. It was mean and cruel.

I wasn't even really aware of this policy until just recently, I mean I knew certain levels of attendance were expected but didn't know it was reward related until Ds came home to say he'd lost his 'golden time'. For being off. With asthma.

He hates breaking any kind of rule and was pretty cut up about it so we did goldentime at home instead.

For all the reasons everyone has said, IT IS BOLLOCKS and it does not encourage parents who don't give a shit to give a shit, it just makes those who do feel even worse that their child will be penalized for having a condition we wish they didn't have to deal with.

So she should have let him but not another child who had had a serious virus, or another whose grandmother died unexpectedly? Or let them all but not Johnny and Sammy who have had multiple suspicious (although unproven) absences.

Schools' attendance policies in England, Wales and N.Ireland have been a (bad) joke for the past couple of years - babies are being thrown out with the bathwater all over.

100% attendance rewards are patently ridiculous (what is the motivation for a child to attend if he has been required to stay at home for 48 hours following D&V on day 2 of term? And how does punishing a five-year-old change the behaviour of a parent who is already disengaged/troubled enough not to make sure his/her child attends school regularly in the first place?)

'Fines' are a nonsense. They are not fines. They are fixed penalty notices. In other words, if you refuse to pay the 'fine' for non-attendance, you must be taken to court for the non-attendance - it's not optional that you might be taken to court for non-payment. And those cases are by no means easy for LAs to win, as has been shown already.

And amongst all this, who loses out? The kids from genuinely chaotic and challenged backgrounds, for whom attendance is a serious problem, and whose families need support, not further stigma.

But hell, as long as those stats look good....

iguana discretion in each case, your being obtuse.

Hospital is different though, as all children's wards have teachers attached in term time. I think technically that's "educated offsite".

Does anyone have any good ideas about positive ways to motivate children to maximise their attendance that don't have the obvious disadvantages of the 100% reward scheme?

Are there any schools which have come up with really great approaches? Obviously you send in the EWOs to the parents of children with dodgy records and no medical notes, but how can you instil the virtue of attendance in the children who have been lumbered with slightly crap parents?

The only thing it is doing is punishing the child, for something beyond his/her control, be it a stomach bug, virus, accident. The head acting like a robot without thought or discretion. Actually the heads response in this case was very robotic and unfeeling. No mention of how sorry she was for the boy that he was in hospital.

Bloody hell, York, that's one of the most shocking things I've read on here (and I've seen some pretty shocking things). (I take back my rant - yours totally puts it in perspective).

And yes, I know the letter is a pro-forma, and I know it's because the school has no way of distinguishing between the kids who are genuinely ill and the ones whose parents are disengaged (except that any decent teacher does know the difference fine, even if they can't prove it, and any decent teacher knows that draconian letters are not the way to help the kids who need the help - I come from a family with a lot of teachers in it!) But it's still annoying.

I live in Scotland and due to a medical condition, DS has had a fair bit of time off. The head classed this as authorised time off and so DS was never sanctioned for it. This is the only sensible way of doing things. Lose privileges and treats for term time holidays and skiving but treating injured and ill children like that is bullshit.

My son is going to see Star Wars tomorrow with the school. It is based on a mixture of praise points, attendance and achievements. So not just one thing. That makes a lot more sense.

My other ds doesn't get to go due to having too many warnings.

I think it is disgusting to praise or punish children for their health, which is out of their control.

york absolutely shocking and disgusting. These schools should be named and shamed .

ABS
Schools that are managing attendance well do it, essentially, by making school somewhere that kids want to be. They run breakfast clubs; after school groups. They employ an attendance officer (if they can afford it). They reach out to parents, and work closely with them. They establish a culture of attendance, by removing the stigma attached to absence, and particularly, by resisting the temptation to apportion blame.

iguana discretion in each case, your being obtuse.

(You're?)

Actually I'm not. If it's a policy it has to be fair. You would have to make exceptions all the time and then it would be (correctly) unfair in every single circumstance. You can't say that one child's absence is acceptable but another's is not unless there is really ample evidence.

Anyone - one thing which would be worth a try in socially deprived areas I think would be free breakfast clubs (for everyone - so there wasn't a stigma attached, and so it wasn't dependent on crap parents jumping through the hoops required for means testing). There have been a lot of studies showing it significantly improves educational performance (hardly surprising - I can't concentrate when I'm hungry, not surprising growing children can't). But I suspect for children from chaotic home backgrounds, it would give that bit more structure and a bit more reason to get there on time, and for parents who're struggling (again, possibly dependent on food banks, rest of life a real struggle) it would be something positive to get their children for rather than "Oh sod it, late for registration again, bugger it, lets just let them have the morning off".

(My mum used to teach in some really rough schools, in a career going right back to the 1950s - some of the things she used to do, like taking kids to the public baths so they didn't have other kids laughing 'cos they smelled, or taking in my dad's old trousers - think an educational version of call the midwife!).

maud and poppy head teachers have it right, it should be classed as medical which it is, if your in hospital or have to attend hospital. Some are just devoid of any commonsense or feeling, like in this case.

Plus of course one child might take a bereavement of a grandmother very very hard. Another who has only met his grandmother once when he was 2 might not feel the same way. So the same situation but different circumstances. It's really really hard to be perfectly fair.

In response to the pp who asked about any interventions which actually work... It all depends on the family.
Some are just chaotic and have no routines, lose alarm clocks etc. It has to be really extreme before social care are involved. Some families live in such poor accommodation that their clothes are damp and conditions such as asthma are triggered or made worse. The long term aim would be for them to move. Sometimes parents don't speak English and don't engage with the school.

There is genuinely no easy answer to it. Targets and rewards do have an impact (as do fines etc). Carrot and stick is not ideal though.

Medical, coded 'M' is still an absence. Even with a letter from the doctor or whoever. So the M would change the am or pm mark and give a half day absence (unless the child was off for the whole day).

The only codes which give a "present" mark are:

L (late)
B (educated off site - an alternative provision)
D - dual registered (often when a managed
Move is going through)
P - a sporting event (tournament etc)
J - an interview
W - work experience

Re. school engagement - it's worth pointing out that sending out threatening letters really is not going to help if this is a situation. I mean, I am literate, university educated, professional, engaged with my son's education, he's never been late, I help with his homework and reading, he gets read bed time stories - my instinctive off the cuff reaction to the letter I got today was "fuck the lot of youse!" (I shall not act on that off the cuff reaction - but then I have the resources and experience of dealing with bureaucracy to know that a cool response is better). But imagine someone who is already disengaged with the school, who struggles with dealing with authority figures, who doesn't have practise in dealing with the system - I think it's fair to say you can take my reaction and multiply it a hundred fold.

So really, I think the "stick" is totally rubbish and counterproductive (and when it comes to carrots that depend on dumb luck rather than effort, which is precisely what a prize for 100% attendance is - well, frankly, they're totally rubbish too!)

Reward children for effort, and take the time to engage with parents on an individual basis. And use your discretion! (As an adult, I've worked for bosses who trusted me to sort my own work patterns out, and ones who were utter jobsworths - I know which ones I work harder for. And as a lecturer, I've known when to cut students a bit of slack and when to kick them up the arse - and I think I've very rarely got it wrong, in fact I've even had students thank me at graduation either for delivering a kick at the right moment, or for turning a blind eye when the rest of their life was going down the pan and they just needed someone to give them a break). Systems which work on a tick-box, one-size-fits-all approach are hardly ever fit for purpose.

The problem is that Ofsted look very closely at attendance figures and a poor Ofsted these days means heads tend to get their P45. The 95% applies to all schools regardless of intake, so schools with a sizeable proportion of traveller children or who are small and maybe have a couple of children with chronic illnesses are judged in the same way as all schools. The responsiblity for attendance used to be the LEA who employed educational welfare officers to work with families etc. Now the responsiblity falls to schools who either have to buy in the service or employ their own educational welfare officer, tighting budgets mean things are giving and support for these parents who do struggle to get their children in on time has fallen. There is also a difference between children who genuinally have a medical condition and those who call in sick roughly once a week with a headache, but Ofsted don't recognise this, they look for that magic 95% attendance figures.

Lots of heads use attendance rewards as a quick fix, as it can sometimes persuade pupils into school who otherwise might have decided to stay at home because they were tired, felt sick, grazed knee etc. and it is cheaper than buying in more attendance held and supporting these families who do lead more chaotic lives. I don't agree with it as it is discriminatory for those who have health conditions etc. but it can improve attendance otherwise schools wouldn't do it. Every initiative these days has to be carefully evaluated for impact. What really needs to happen is for Ofsted to get rid of this magic 95% figure, and instead inspect that the support for these families and pupils who are struggling to attend school regularly is there instead and that appropriate support is put in place for those who can't get into school for any reason.

Another hater of the scheme...Our school do a rubbish print our for 100%..

Primary kids who don't go to school don't do so because school policy says they can't be in school D&V chicken pox..... or their parents decided they are not going to school for whatever reason.

I don't think the woman child should in the newspaper should be an exception..I think this should illustrate how stupid the policy is....

Surely if a parent doesn't care if there child attends school doesn't care if they miss a film in the hall..

On what planet doesn't she sound spiteful?!
not read article or thread - but usually teachers and schools can do no wrong on this planet op - ie Planet MN.