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.

I see. To be truthful, I sign loads of passports for kids I barely know and may have known for only a few years. It's a silly system.

Hard enough to get a GP appointment but all these organisations insisting for sick notes for minor illnesses do my head in. Personally any absence under 7 days or at least 3 days shouldn't need a sick note. Just creating more work for our stressed services

So the parent doesn't produce a Dr's note and a school chooses to record a child's absence as unauthorised.

Imagine then, an extreme scenario whereby the parent/s end up in court. Where exactly does the evidence of "unauthorised" absence come from?

It's a marvellous way to alienate supportive parents whilst those don't give two shiny shits will carry on taking term-time holidays.

These are not school-level decisions. They are made by the DofE, and then fed down to the LA. As a PP has said, schools are then judged on this and it can have massive implications. Yes it's crap, and school's don't like doing it either. But it is to the school's detriment not to comply.

The schools are only responding to government attendance targets which expect each child to be present for 96% of the school year.

Students which drop below that are then usually followed up by their tutors to find out whether there is any underlying issue.

Students with attendance below 96% routinely underperform at GCSE.

Schools with average attendance below 96% are more likely to have an early OFSTED inspection.

The government pay for the schools to run, they want students to do well, if students aren't even there, it's a waste of everyone's money.

Obviously, this is just another typically ill considered government initiative because children DO get ill, and most normal parents are unlikely to even consider going to a Dr until 4 or 5 days into an illness.

HOWEVER, equally, there are a significant number of parents who don't regard school as important and will happily allow their children's attendance to drop.

The school has a duty to attempt to discover the reasons behind non attendance.

Please don't take out your frustrations on the school, they're just following instructions, but I WOULD send a photo of the sign!

Before end of term my ds school emailed to say any child off sick before the end of term I. E the Thursday or Friday or the start of the new term will need doctors proof as they see a rise in absence tagging onto school holidays

Schools do have a duty to try and discover reasons behind non-attendance, but they dont have a duty to ask for proof of GP attendance for minor illness. It will also, as a pp pointed out, alienate parents. I've a good relationship with my child's school, but they don't pull this stupid, irresponsible shit. If they did, the good relationship would evaporate.

Inform the School in no uncertain terms that your child has been ill, you have certified that to them and there is no requirement for NHS resources to be wasted due to unnecessary requests from schools.

I do think that Schools don’t always think their processes through and end up sending some daft communications to parents, so a bit of firm constructive feedback is good for them.

I think it's ridiculous, we do have to trust parents and it should only be an issue if there is a significant number of missed days.

At my work the rules say we have to get a doctors note if we are off sick next to a holiday or a bank holiday. Hopefully it won't happen but I am not going to bother the doctor if my work don't trust me.

I think it's ridiculous, we do have to trust parents and it should only be an issue if there is a significant number of missed days.

Indeed. We do trust parents in the main. Even in the examples I gave earlier we did register the children as ill (except the one who was honest and said they were on holiday). We only ask for evidence of illness where attendance is very low and the EWO is involved. The family is advised that ANY future absence will be unauthorised without evidence of illness but this does only start when absence is well below the level self by the DfE.

We are NOT allowed to authorise absence for holidays etc. even if we wanted to. We can authorise for genuinely exceptional circumstances.

Unauthorised absence in our area does not result in a fine. Fines are not imposed by schools, they are imposed by the local authority and in our area they only fine if attendance is bad overall.

Also “he/she is unwell” is not sufficient. We have to ask for more information because we have to do reports to our local health authority about numbers of certain illnesses. We aren’t being nosy for the sake of it.

Agreed in a way lazy but what do you suggest is done about those feckless parents? Just allow them to continue being 'feckless'?

But does this approach target the feckless parents? Will they care if someone threatens them with being marked as unauthorised? If they are on holiday, they're hardly going to change their flights and come home early for fear of another day being added to the tally, and if they are genuine, then the school are damaging their own attendance figures needlessly and accusing a family of lying. I just can't see the benefit to this kind of approach.

Write to the ccg and ask theor opinion about this. Absurd waste of GP time.

Write to the school and ask what evidence they have to infer you are a liar.

Spectacularly wasteful and spectacularly discourteous.

But does this approach target the feckless parents?

Actually it often does. We had one child who was absent EVERY Monday and many Fridays when they first started with us....EWO got involved and parent was told that no absence would be authorised without medical evidence. The child’s attendance the following term was really good.

Curious. What evidence is expected from a GP anyway?
They don't even write certificates for work, unless you are off for more than 7 days.
Proof of appointment? What proof.? Your phone records to show you called the surgery at 8.00 am that day?
Unless prescription medicine, a bottle of calpol won't have the date on it.
And I am horrified that some schools make sick children attend, even if vomiting!

Maybe tell them your GP won't write such notes and suggest they send a first aider to come and assess his temperature/fever.

I'm a teacher. I completely agree with you. However, it is now forced upon schools to justify. Our AIO now writes to GP's who have provided medical evidence for persistent absences to ask if the medical issues justify the amount of time off. The pressure on schools to improve attendance is ridiculous. Ours is in the low to mid 90's and we are constantly being told it isnt good enough.

Maybe a photo of the fever thermometer reading? And maybe a well-lighted shot of your child's inflamed throat?

I kid.

If your child was vomiting, think of the lovely photo you could send of that!

“and not doctors for being so awkward.” Because the drs are NOT being “awkward”!!

There’s absolutely NO good reason for valuable nhs time and resources to be wasted on seeing children who are merely suffering from common winter bugs that can and should be simply treated at home and for which the vast majority of the time the primary care hcps can do nothing for anyway.

It’s also actually putting sick children at risk. You take a young child with a bad cold to a gp surgery this time of year you risk them being exposed to more serious infections which they are more vulnerable to as they’re already sick! And it can put other patients at risk unnecessarily too there could well be immunocompromised and otherwise vulnerable patients in the waiting area. They don’t need to be exposed to coughing or vomiting kids.

It’s ludicrous and potentially harmful “advice”

It’s bureaucratic bullshit make work.

Schools when I was a child didn’t have any of this nonsense and yet we received a good education. I’m an army brat so I’m not even talking having gone to 1 primary school and 1 secondary school but myself and siblings have gone to a variety of schools all around the uk.

Good schools and teachers KNOW their pupils, they know which families are piss takers and which are genuine. The govt should trust them to assess this.

I have quite a few family and friends are also teachers inc heads and they’re utterly sick of this bollocks too!

They know the families that don’t attend well for no good reason and they know the families that are good attenders and if dc absent it’s with good reason.

I have a dd with a disability that only got dx the summer before she started high school. At first we had a few battles with the school not listening but mainly to do with when she was in school as her condition means she has to watch high impact activity (pe) and struggles with things like having to use stairs a lot. And yes there were times she needed to stay home too. The difficulty was they didn’t know me or dd and so didn’t know if we were at it or genuine. Things came to a head at one point and a combination of me insisting on a meeting with the head (I’d previously been dealing with pe teacher and head of year who kept ignoring instructions despite a consultants letter stating the advice), photos of how it affected dd and a letter from her head at primary all combined to resolve matters...until the school got a new head who was like bloody Gordon brittas! Never met a rule he wouldn’t follow to the letter regardless who it hurt. (Whole other thread!)

If we’d had to get a letter from gp every time she had a flare up and needed to stay home that would have put her at serious risk as part of her condition is she’s more vulnerable to certain infections especially during a flare up. Plus my gps would have rightly been annoyed at their time being wasted as there was nothing they could do for her.

“it has become a cottage industry in some charging for letters, passport verification and so on.” These things are NOT part of the nhs, they aren’t paid for by the state, they take time to do and that is time taken away from patients.

Anyone familiar with my posting history knows I am no particular fan of gps for other reasons but on this they are absolutely right.

They should not have their time and appointments wasted dealing with providing “proof” to schools that a child is genuinely too sick for school.

I also think that chasing up of absence should be triggered by concern for the child, not by concern for the school's attendance figures hear hear!

I too think if a child has reasonable attendance record and is a good student the occasional term time holiday is not a problem. As you say other countries aren’t so anal about this stuff and have equal if not better educational outcomes.

and the school not the parent must pay the fee incurred. love that!

Dd had a 55% attendance rate in year 13. I wasn’t asked once to provide a doctors note or hospital letter. I guess the school believed me.

Most schools do this because parents claim illness when in fact they are still on holiday. The school is always suspicious of illness directly before or following scheduled school holidays

graphista,I do understand but, with respect, you don't work in a school . Governments would tell you results and standards have been driven up and one factor is that attendance at school is FAR better than it was in the 70s and 80s when it was, frankly, pretty sporadically monitored and many students had low attendance. Various chaotic homes were slipping through nets . Now, maybe it shouldn't be down to schools to spot this, remedy this etc but it increasingly is.

Other than the not going to happen solution of telling us that schools should live and let live I just am not sure what schools should do. You can't ignore some students' absences or apply different rules to different students.

Doctors clawing back their workload is all well and good but schools are not being given any support to also be able to do this.

Believe me , much as it sounded like it I am not having a pop at GPs but I don't think the default should be to view schools as awkward.

I genuinely would like to know how anyone proposes raising attendance since the default argument seems to be leave those kids alone...

And the reason there was not chased up in year 13 beaver is because the obligation to rigorously monitor attendance in the same way stops at 16. Although many very effective schools will keep working with families.

Plus, you wouldn't have needed a letter form a GP every time your DD had a flare up graphite. One letter to cover the condition and subsequent illness form a specialist normally covers this. ime consultants do this very willingly.

graphista : sorry! Spellcheck!