To be pissed offer that dd is on attendance watch.

[Fantasticday69]

So Dd2 is in year 7. She had a really bad tummy bug near the start of the year. So she had the required 2 days off.
Now because her attendance is only 89% she is on attendance watch.
Aibu to be annoyed as it is just bad timing. 2 days off later in the year would not trigger such an event but it is still the same level of absence.

My DS fell below the acceptable attendance because he had days off for..

1. Balancing at school, falling and bashing his mouth so hard he couldn't eat. His lip was huge.

1. Being hit in the eye by another child at school with a large outdoor building block that required hospital treatment & has left him with a scar now.

Both the schools fault but attendance is down to parents...

Yep she will be monitored until it returned to 97%. Going to take a while.

I would email the school politely pointing out that it's madness to monitor her attendance because of this. Then I would not worry or think about it again about if your daughter is well and attends school regularly. It's just a system that flags anyone below a certain percent which obviously will give a more accurate idea of children with true poor attendance later on in the school year.

One year my son missed the second and third day of term due to illness so he had 33% attendance at that time. By the end of the year it was about 97%. He was not monitored as far as I know though. I still hate awards for attendance, people get ill and we shouldn't encourage them to spread it round to everyone else.

Ds struggled in on his first day at Senior School.He then had the following 2 days off. Not only was I called in weekly to discuss ds's attendance until it reached acceptable levels. He was threatened with suspension and expulsion because of his poor attendance.
His attendance had fallen to 33% after the first 3 days.
No amount of pointing out that that if he had the time off at the end of the year there wouldn't have been an issue

They expelled one pupil because of his non attendance. He had been badly beaten up and had broken bones in the school on his first day and spent 3 weeks in hospital.

We didn't make it to half term before I pulled ds out of school.

I don't blame you Oliver's. How ridiculous.

Oliversmumsarmy That school sounds awful, pleased to hear he no longer attends there.

fleshmarketclose

Pain the arse isn't it?

Both mine had chicken pox - so they had 5 days off each. We got a letter telling us how bad their attendance was and how bad it is for their education - like i don't know - and any further absences will mean referral to a family welfare officer - whoever that is. Seriously?! It was chicken pox. NHS guidance states keep children away till they have scabs. I've told the boys no more sickness now. If they have anything I will take them and the school can just ring and send them home. What can you do?!

I had one last week about DS, He was diagnosed in April with an autoimmune Disorder and consequently had only 87% attendance for that school year, the school were totally in the loop with what was happening.

This Term he has had one day off with issues related to his illness and we got the letter about his attendance slipping blah blah.

I threw it in the bin.

I sympathise, because being told you're being monitored feels like you're being judged. And I hate the idea of rewards for attendance. But... you really aren't being judged. The school just decides on an non-attendance level which triggers 'keeping an eye on'. They know perfectly well that in the majority of cases it will be because of perfectly reasonable causes (i.e. illness), but they need an actual consistent policy on this kind of thing, rather than relying on a hunch-based "Oh that parent is a bit dodgy and is probably just letting their child bunk off' type system, which would be unfair and unreliable.

Dd was off for two whole weeks last November. Obviously her attendance figures at that point were then terrible. But that in no way meant that the school was criticising us for keeping her off. (In fact several teachers kept looking at her and saying "Are you sure you should be back yet, you look really pale!" when she returned).

I don't have a problem with bring monitored as such. However it seems daft to trigger this action after one short absence which at the end of the year would be ignored.

I wish there was a way for schools to inject a bit of common sense in attendance policies. But this has been going on here (I'm in the US) for quite some time and is all about attendance money. Schools get paid per day based on the number of pupils who are in school that day. My sons are late 20s & early 30s and I remember when my youngest was in 7th grade, eldest in HS the school district actually issued letters saying that if your child was ill to bring them in for attendance count and then take them home (so they'd get their money for that day). Yes, bring in your contagious poorly child, have them sit at their desk for about 20 minutes & infect everyone else, then take them home. Crackers!!

It also used to be that you could take a child out for family needs or short holidays. They'd send you with a packet of work to be done to keep them at level with missed days and usually an extra writing assignment about what you did. Now, even attending a family funeral is considered an unexcused absence, even if you submit a death certificate/funeral program.

He had only gone in the first day because it was a new school and he wanted to get himself sorted with his timetable etc. I personally was reluctant to send him in as I could see him struggling.

At this stage he couldn't read and although they fell over themselves to demand I go in to weekly meetings about his attendance. Not one teacher would discuss his reading and writing issues with me.

The icing on the cake was when I had pulled him out of the school they were all over me wanting to know why I had decided to pull him out. Apparently I should have rung in and made an appointment. It really didn't sink in that I had tried to do that but no one had got back to me ever.

I got a letter at work for having the temerity to be off 3 times in a 12 month period. 2 days with winter vomiting virus, 2 days a few weeks later with a chest infection so bad that I got sent home becasue I passed out! And 1 day off 8 months later for a migraine.

I told my boss I'd file it beside all the letters I'd had about my perfect attendance over the previos 8 years....i.e. I put it straight in the bin with the non existant leters.

Our school has recently become completely ridiculous over attendance. So much so, that I dread DS being really ill (with the flu or something) and having the attendance Gestapo on my back forever more. It's like Nazi Germany in that place ( sorry, couldn't resist)

YANBU - 2 days off sick with vomiting is hardly unusual. But what can you do?

Oliversmumsarmy Well I think you were right to pull him out of there as fast as you did. Any school that is obsessed with attendance and not interested in discussing parental concerns about reading/writing needs to look at their priorities. Hope your child is settled and doing better now.

So, effectively what they should do OP is take the absence as a percentage of the entire available days for school attendance for the year or term regardless of whether those days have passed yet and then it only becomes an issue if the overal days off that term exceed the threashold before the term is over.

That seems fairer to me and achieves the same outcome in terms of picking up those with frequent absence. To take the absence as a percentage of completed days really skews the stats,

Does anyone else feel that teachers and schools make up a lot of useless shit and if they just applied a little common sense they might get to go home a bit earlier and wouldn't be so stressed.

Ds's 2 day absence equalled 2 teachers sitting and lecturing me about my ds's attendance for at least 10-12 minutes every Friday evening for 6 weeks. That is at least 1 hour from each teacher, not to mention the rainforest of notes about those 2 days absence that ended up in the bin.

Yet they had no time to read emails about his inability to read or write and the possibility that he might be Dyslexic.

Exactly.

Now try and convince schools that is the way it should be done.

I don't agree with attendance awards, not least because they penalise children with chronic conditions and encourage children who should be at home recovering to struggle into school. Our school does punctuality awards instead: for children who are there on time on the days that they attend. Much preferable.

But think about all those children who slip through the cracks: where tragic cases have come about because no-one appeared to notice or care if they were at school regularly (or fed properly, or clothed adequately). Think about the lower attainment of children with chaotic households and struggling families.

Should the authorities put on some sort of sorting hat to determine who are the "naice" families whose kids are off for "proper" reasons and which need help and intervention? Or how else should they do that?

But you can't just calculate attendance based on what it would be extrapolated over the year. That way you miss the DC who take a lot of absence all at once. A child who (say) takes 3 weeks off out of the first 5, should be being highlighted.

Maybe a combination of annual and half-termly is the way to go?

I wish there was a way for schools to inject a bit of common sense in attendance policies.

What would your "common sense" policies look like, across?

I'm all ears

RedSkyAtNight well the year was a bit ambitious ( :) ) but it should totally work on a term basis and your example would be picked up.
To be honest surely that would be picked up anyway and that level of absence is likly to be down to either a large one-off event or syptomatic of a chrnic condition so should be known to the school. A letter home would make no difference in that case regardless.

@Fantasticday69

This is very annoying! I mean, I could understand it if the attendance had slipped under say, 70%, but just under 90% is bonkers! I mean, they would only have to be off sick for a week and a 2 days, and that would mess up the % for the whole term - probably longer!

Very unfair and wrong. I mean, what if they are in hospital for 4 weeks, or go to a few funerals, or lose a close family member?

My niece actually suffered awful bullying in year 9, at school AND on the internet, and even though my sister told the school and tried to sort it, she just alienated the mothers of the girls bullying her, and they all ganged up on her, and my niece (her daughter.) Life was unbearable for them both for a while. (Oddly, none of the parents ever had a go at my sister's husband! )

When my sister told the school about what was happening, my niece was offered counselling to deal with the bullying better. (You couldn't make it up!) And she (and her mother) were both accused of being hysterical and irrational and 'over sensitive.'

Then (of course,) she started to have time off because she was scared to go in school. Whenever she was due a day of lessons with these girls, she would cry at the thought of going in. So my sister let her stay home. (Not great I know!!!)

Then out of the blue came a letter about her 'attendance problem' from the Education authority, (ET,) (it had gone down to 87%.....) My sister went mad! She contacted them (by letter AND phone,) immediately, and explained WHY her daughter was missing school, and how the school did not give a shit.

The ET contacted the school and actually went batshit on them, wanting to know why the issue was dealt with so badly, etc etc.... Shortly after, the 3 girls were warned sternly, (written warning type thing.) and the parents were warned too, and a severe and strict cyber bullying rule was put in place. ONLY when the ET intervened though.

After ten months of suffering, the bullying stopped very quickly. Thankfully!

So yeah, back to what the OP was about..... this attendance thing is bollocks. I hate it too.

Surely they should be able to separate someone who is 'off sick' for long-ish periods because they are not well or have a condition, (and people who have been genuinely ill,) from the persistent truant-players.

It's the same with work. I mean FFS, you can't help being ill, yet when you come back after a day or 2 off, you get grilled and made to fill in some 'return to work' bollocks, where they say 'why were you off sick? Words like UNWELL or SICK are not acceptable!'