To think it's very unreasonable for school not to take my word DS is sick.

[VioletsArePurple]

DS has been home sick (sore throat, fever, headache) for three days. I have emailed them each day to inform them he is ill. No response from them on day 1 or day 2. He's going back tomorrow. Today (day 3) I got I an email from school with the following text: "...Just wanted to check in regarding how XXX is doing and also from an attendance perspective. Our school policy around holidays is to mark a child as unauthorised absence unless we have medical evidence for their illness. I wonder if you have been to the GP or hospital and if you have any evidence of this or a prescription bottle you could email us a photo of so I can change his attendance to illness once he comes back in."

AS it happens I was at the GP this afternoon for an appointment for me. And behind reception there was a sign stating:

SICK NOTES FOR SCHOOL ABSENCE
Your GP does not provide this information.
Please do not book an appointment.
A school should accept a note from the child's parent or guardian.
Speak to reception for further information.

Now, I should point out I actually love our school. But this email annoyed me. They have no idea how much I was looking forward to the first day of school. They can have DS all of next break to make up for it if they like.

One of the markers of pupil outcomes is attendance!

I think that can end up becoming circular reasoning, though. Yes, the better the attendance, the better the chances of maximising good outcomes, but that doesn't follow that a child is doing better simply because they haven't missed any days of school.

Nobody would argue that McDonald's food is clearly much better and healthier than other food options as 'proven' by the fact that millions of people eat there every day.

WeBuilt,

However, IIRC, the data says that for pupils who start at the same level of attainment but then have different levels of attendance, those whose attendance drops below a certain level will on average have lower attainment over time than those with better attendance.

So like saying that for people who start with similar markers of fitness but who then eat more or less McDonalds over the following years, those who eat above a certain threshold of McDonald's food will, on average, have worse fitness over time.

Yes, eating McDonald's, like attendance, is to a certain extent a proxy marker - poor attendance is a proxy marker of parental attitude to school, chaotic home life, chronic health conditions, while eating McDonald's very frequently can be a proxy measure for lack of parental knowledge of cooking meals from scratch, fuel poverty, poor housing without adequate cooking facilities etc.

Both might indicate a need for further investigation - and might not mean anything other than e.g. a series of one-off ailments or a period when a home was being renovated.

One of the markers of pupil outcomes is attendance!

Yes, but the problem with assessing the impact of poor attendance on attainment is that it's often the causes of the poor attendance which are damaging attainment as much as or more than the poor attendance itself. Thus little Tarquin, who has poor attendance because Mummy and Daddy are keen on jetting him off to the Bahamas in term time will probably do fine (even though he's not that bright), as may Emily who's been off sick loads but her mum has badgered teachers for work to give her, but their fairly bright classmate with the unexplained absences, unwashed uniform and a mum who sometimes doesn't turn up to pick him up... not such good attainment.

Lazy,

Exactly. So as a primary class teacher, I am not interested in the poor attendance as poor attendance,. but on what the poor attendance might be telling me about that child's life and experience. If it tells me that they've been unlucky this term with bugs, but attendance in all other years has been fine, parents are engaged etc - no problem. If it is part of a larger picture, then that 'alert' of poor attendance can trigger a whole set of investigations / interventions that can alleviate some of the problems. It's sometimes that hard ' attendance' data that directs notice towards a 'just below the surface' issue that needed to be brought to light.

That’s not what’s being talked about here - a child with good attendance, and supportive parents having an occasional absence isn’t remotely the same as trying to evidence munchausens by proxy

Blimey - are people still trying to claim that munchausens by prozy exists? Did people learn nothing from the Sally Clark case?

And that's how it should be, cantkeepaway. But that's not how all schools see it. For starters, I think good attendance awards/treats should be outright banned. They reward and punish kids for things that are not within the child's power to achieve or fail to achieve. Denying a certificate to a neglected child (who may well get no other school recognition either) because they are unable to achieve good attendance really is a special kind of cruel.

Lazy,

I think the difficult part is schools working out how to 'tip the balance slightly' towards attending school each day when looking at a child who, while they are not quote neglected or who have parents who are not wholly disengaged, are not attending school quite as muh as they perhaps could be.

It's about trying to make it a little bit easier to make the 'attend school' decision, and a bit harder to make the 'miss school' decision. There are no 'foolproof' ways of doing this, and there are no ways that don't have unwanted consequences in terms of other families / children as well, especially as it is utterly unfair to put in procedures for some families rather than others based on 'feel'. [Stop and search, anyone?]

So attendance awards that incentivise children to come to school or ask their parents to take them to school, requesting evidence of illness, chasing up families who report 'sickness' around holiday times etc etc are all ways that schools try to 'tip the balance' - all overly crude, but until someone comes up with a perfect answer, effective for some target families, some of the time.

Blimey - are people still trying to claim that munchausens by prozy exists?

Sorry, you’re quite correct, it’s now recorded as Factitous Disorder Imposed on Another. The fact that Sally Clark was wrongly accused doesn’t mean others don’t use their chilldrens health factitiously.

Buy the day’s newspaper and send them a photo of him with it at home.

I used to work in a school where attendance was historically poor - specifically but not solely because about 35% of the children were travellers. A more cynical school might have tried to discourage the travellers from registering at school in the first place (each additional such registration brought the average attendance down just a bit further).

One of the measures initiated involved certificates for 'good' or 'improved' attendance - with no specific number attached. This was surprisingly successful, despite its crudeness and simplicity, because being a small school the measure of 'good' or 'improved' could be individualised and it became possible for ANYONE to get such an award IF they came to school just a bit more than before.....

Pretty sure in the UK it is called FII : Fabricated or Induced Illness. It exists.

I used to work in a school where attendance was historically poor - specifically but not solely because about 35% of the children were travellers.

Our school has a very high proportion of traveller children but when they are travelling their attendance is coded as T so it doesn’t impact on attendance figures.

FamilyofAliens,

The school was next to one of the largest settled Traveller sites in the county - low attendance was not due to actual travelling, but instead to traditional parental attitudes towards education within the community (only one of the adult women resident on the site could read and write, for example, and many would not set foot in the school due to their own childhood experiences when they had on occasion attended schools) - so the T code was not applicable.

Yup, I have had similar experiences. No T coding allowed.

I am a teacher and if I am off sick before or after any holiday including a bank holiday I have to get a doctors note. This means I have to pay for a private one which the school reimbursed me for.

Maybe they are trying to add this to the attendance policy for the children!

My ds has poor attendance figures, this year he has managed 87% attendance which is the best he has had at this school. He is ASD, has acute anxiety, depression, self harms & has hypotonia which manifests itself by the muscles in his calf cramping & tearing resulting in nerve damage. I have always kept school informed on what is happening, but I always get harrassed by them when he is off school. School referred us to Mast & the mast worker pushed me to take him to a mental health drop in run by the youth service, which was held in school time & meant that once a week he missed an afternoon to attend, then the drop in service referred him to a key worker that meant that he missed 3 hours one morning a week. Bearing in mind that he is Y11 & doing his exams next summer I get a bit annoyed when they are moaning about his attendance when most of it was instigated because of them contacting Mast, plus the worker goes in to school every week & drags him out of lessons to see her. He was very ill before Christmas, he had a chest & throat virus that wouldn't clear up & he was too poorly to go to school, I always took him to the doctors & more or less got told to stop wasting their time until the infection resulted in him having fluid on his lungs, needing 2 courses of antibiotics & steroids until he was properly well again. I had the attendance officer knocking on my door insisting that I got him out of bed so she could see he was still alive. I always send in a photograph of the appointment slip & any prescriptions he gets & the out of hours doctor actually wrote on his prescription slip a signed note that he was very ill, had fluid on his lungs & shouldn't be at school & signed it. He is never wandering ths streets like other kids from his school who should be in school but I get harrassed when it appears that nothing gets done about the other kids. They even insist that I collect him for his mental health appointments, even though they know that I am severely disabled & mostly housebound, I was picking him up & driving him to the bus stop & he went to his appointments on his own, I'm not allowed to go in the appointments with him either & it is a total waste of what little energy I have.

One of the measures initiated involved certificates for 'good' or 'improved' attendance

Now that is a much better idea.

Many parents at work have to take their child's hospital discharge letter in to school to prove their child has been in hospital. This is confidential information that parents shouldn't have to share unless they want to.

@Toddlerteaplease I’ve never heard of that happening in any work place I’ve been in or my DHs workplaces or any of my friends - I’ve never heard of a parent needing to evidence their child being an in patient. While I’m not saying it happens, I think it’s far from common.

@jellycatspyjamas it's very common where I work. We've also had children be forced to do PE post op. Because the school wouldn't listen.

Tell them to mark it however they bloody want to!

And (harrumph) POOR families do not choose a £300 flight over a £900 flight...hmm
I said poorer not poor. I've been poor. I couldn't afford to take my kids anywhere. Now I can sometimes. And I will.

It's a ridiculous waste of time and resources pestering parents of children with otherwise good attendance for doctors notes for illnesses that need nothing more than calpol and rest.

Dd has just started high school and at the end of the Christmas holidays she caught the horrible virus the rest of us had over Christmas. I kept her off for three days and informed school each day that she was ill and would be back as soon as she was well enough. All she needed was otc medicine and rest, no need to take up a GP appointment that are near impossible to get just to be told she has a virus.

I had a phone call from school saying that their policy is that they need a doctors note as the absence was at the end of school holidays so they wanted proof we weren't on holiday. I told them she didn't need to see a GP and I wasn't wasting an appointment for a virus just to satisfy their policy that went against d of e and GP guidelines, but added that they were welcome to phone my younger dc's school to varify that they'd been in school every day dd was off school.

The school aren't happy but tough, legally they have no right to demand a doctors note and I know EWO won't be interested as my dcs all have 98% + attendance every year with the exception of the year they all got chicken pox and had to be off for two weeks until they were no longer contagious.

Receptionist in our gps do attendance notices for schools. You get the child’s name, doctor’s name, date and time of appointment and the stamp of the surgery. The doctors found it was easier for the receptionist to handle it! They’ve even done it for phone in appointments.

Last year my daughter caught a few stomach bugs. The school asked me if I could prove it. I said I could if they'd like me to send in a sample of her sick. They shut up pretty quickly then.
I know it was a bit disgusting to say that but how else was I meant to prove she was sick. (Pretty obvious we weren't on holiday as my other daughter was in school).