Or this is totally not right

[Sophisticatedsarcasm]

Just got my DD report today, and the attendance is listed as 91% which in my calculations is wrong considering she’s been at school everyday except the 2 half days she got sent home for being ill. The only other days she had off were because the school was closed, one for a snow day and another one because a suspected ww2 bomb was found in the vicinity. Surely they shouldn’t include those days as part of her absences ? Can anyone shed any light to this?

I had that a lot and pay little attention to it. It’s the school’s loss. In secondary I reckon it’s even more inaccurate.

However if you’re feeling charitable and want to flag it up to school so their attendance figures look better then go ahead.

@Bouledeneige no one bothers calculating it. It's included in the school report.

I think it does matter actually.

My ds has 2 authorised absences for this week BECAUSE of his impeccable attendance.

If it was reported he had had 17 days off because the computer said so, he wouldn’t be authorised this week.

Mine for comparison,the days when school was shut(Y) weren't counted either. Just illness.

School have made a mistake. They have printed from SIMS using a cut off date in the future - they aren't supposed to do that. By doing it it screws with the SIMS system and it has awarded your DD an extra 16 day's absence (32 sessions). The attendance officer should be aware of this, it's in the basic training!

Yes OP flag it up.

If you were travellers she'd only have to do half anyway, my oldest daughter seems to find this 100% attendance thing a big deal for her kids, weird!

I know its in the report - but who bothers checking it and calculating what it should be?

Really - my kids are both now fiinished at a high performing secondary school - it really doesn't matter. It didnt at primary either.

Even if it was to do with school age she was 5 the day after she started, she’s the oldest in her class.

So she wasn’t compulsory school age until January then.

Either way I wouldn’t worry. If it was a problem they would have told you. It’s the system working it out wrong.

Well I'd definitely check since DD's school proposed at some point to add all inset days to may half term in order to improve attendance. No matter that it would leave all working parents fucked. So if this attendance that needs improving is due to en error.. I'd be in the office the next day.

Some schools make A LOT of fuss about attendance..to parents,to kids,in assemblies,extra prizes etc. If it is such a school I don't see why parents shouldn't check everything is correct and fair.

They haven't worked the percentage out correctly...they have worked out using the entire year amount of sessions but there was still nearly three weeks of school left so there's an extra 29 attendance marks missing.
She's only missed 1.5days by the look of it

Her actual percentage was 99% when they printed that sheet off

Thanks guys, I’m just glad I am not going mad, I just compared the sheet with DS and his sheet has # for after this week... probably just an admin error, will talk to my friend who works in the school office (she doesn’t do important tasks like that just answering phones and such) It will me more on thier interest than mine as I have proof they fucked it up for future records.....

The 91.28% has been arrived at by dividing the actual attendances (335) by the possible attendances (367) and multiplying by 100.

The actual attendances would have been calculated up to the date the report was printed off, and the possible attendances are presumably being counted up to the end of term, which is how the anomaly has arisen.

If they've done this for everyone across the school, the whole school's attendance figures will be seriously skewed.

Is there a new person in the office?

Isn't it just a basic error? Authorised absences is 0.82, but they've subtracted 8.2. Error in decimal places somewhere, that's all.

No big deal, just take it in and ask then to recalculate.

Y is a perfect code to use for school closure such as snow. It is an admin code and doesnt impact attendance at all. But only someone with appropriate levels of authorisation can set it up (like me!). We had originally coded our school closure for snow as a mixture of I "illness" as reported by parents and C but those both impact attendance. When school SLT have taken the decision to close a school there should be a duty of care to consider attendance stats. So I changed ours to Y. I occasionally have parents ask about absence and never mind checking the records.

My DS says he’s had 16 days off but that’s not true, because I’ve marked down all the times he’s missed ... it doesn’t add up to 16

No, it probably adds up to 8. Each day is marked into two. At morning register the child is in attendance or absent and same in the afternoon. Hence if you have a whole day off, that's two absences - two registers.

Some codes don't count as absence - Y (eg on snow days), V (educational trip or visit) etc

Some codes count as absent but their authorised - M (medical) etc

Some codes count as unauthorised - U (very late), N (absent, no reason given), O etc

Does it matter in the scheme of things?

One thing it won't be imo is a mathematical error.
This report is generated from SIMS(?) used in loads of (every?) school up and down the country.
The OP should be able to see from the rest of the report how the % figure was reached. It says the dates it is run from-to, and has a print out of every session with a coding.
The OP needs to check the codings and the from-to dates, and go from there. If the OP doesn't understand it the school office will/should be able to explain.

So someone beat me to it, was planning on calling the school after work just to give them a heads up but got an email at lunch time stating they realise they’ve made a mistake and the new correct copy will be sent out today. 😊

Apparently the absence assistant clicked end of term instead of end of report.