To keep her off again? Will something happen?

[tabbysarerude]

My child has had 4 absences, the AM and PM count as one each. I kept her off when she was coughing in the night. And last night she's been sick and said her tummy felt bad.

Do I force her in or keep her off? The head mentioned something about if they don't get 98% attendance it triggers the law? Not sure what she meant but I'd rather force her into school feeling unwell than have some type of fine.

You'd rather force your child who threw up last night in to school than have some type of fine?!

That would just be plain f*cking cruel!

Keep the poor mite off and to hell with the consequences!

People being scared of bullying attendance officers is what allows this crap to continue! Stand up to them and raise holy hellfire if they even think of "fining" you or "medical evidence".

My kids school demanded medical evidence on unfair grounds, I told her where to get off and nothing more was said. They're not used to parents standing up against them.

Would you like to be forced to go out having been sick?? send them a picture of her puke for all I care but do not force her to go in! It's not fair.

That sounds like scare mongering on the Head's part. We struggled to get my dd into school last year....she was on 17% attendance by the end of the school year 😞....didn't even trigger a visit from the school attendance officer, let alone the authorities! How she managed to pass her GCSEs I'll never know....it was Y11 😬

There will be children at the school who are known to ss and whose attendance is a concern. Children who are always late and parents that the teachers are suspicious of. The school can't single out these parents so send out a blanket email to everyone. Don't worry about it too much, you and your child are probably not on the radar.

I would always keep my child off with an upset stomach out of fear that he could be sick or have a toileting accident at school. Just not worth the risk for him to suffer that kind of embarrassment.

My dds school is like this.

Shes unwell at the moment, headache, coughing up gunk, dizzy. GP wants her in tonight as her temp has been going up and down between medication all weekend. Dd had friday off and today and she’s terrified of her attendance as they get given a letter at the end of every term.

I used to work as a welfare officer/head of first aid in a school. They had a horrible policy that the child had to come in and I would send them home again if they were ill no matter what.

The poor parents dragging very unwell children into my office at 8:45am, where I would have to look at them and send them straight home when they should’ve still been in bed. I’d have parents raging at me (quite rightly). It was bloody awful.

If they’re ill they’re ill! You don’t send in a sick child just to satisfy a %

Yes she made a huge point of it saying literally 'it does trigger that legal route if you are off this much' I don't know how much is too much but I'm on high alert, going through a divorce, and feeling like a bad parent all round so hardly want the authorities asking me to prove something that's not possible to prove, like the fact she vomited at 10pm this Sunday.

Not sure I’d actually do it at this point but I’d be considering putting in a complaint to the governors about that head.

Theres not much she could be doing about what she’s required to do by the LA (letters and highlighting attendance rates) but surely at this point she should be offering to review any support they could be giving your dc to help raise their attendance rather than intimidating you.

There's not really any support I need though because if my child has said she feels unwell, been sick, or had a cough while the strep is going around and I keep her off, what could avoid this?

She's not sicker than other kids, in fact she rarely gets sick, and I wouldn't call a cough sick, but didn't want to risk spreading or catching the strep or that would not have been a day off.

So that's just my far, "support" where there's nothing we lack comes across as frightening because if there's nothing they can offer then what next?

I appreciate that @tabbysarerude, sometimes that’s just how it is. That doesn’t mean that the conversations with you at this point can’t include the offer. Leaping into conversations about legalities is just aggressive. If you did have contact from an attendance officer at this point you’d say what you have here and they’d go ‘oh, okay’ and just advise what they’d be looking out for you from now on. And that would be because they have to, not necessarily because they think they’ll ever have to enforce it.

Schools aren't obsessed with attendance, Ofsted is, which puts the monkey on our backs. 🙄

Have I read that right? You’d “rather force her into school unwell than pay a fine?” 😧
Wow.
And fuck the head- they only care about the attendance stats so the school look good. You must know this. It’s scare tactics and control, please put your child first.

Your child is sick so keep her at home. If she has been sick she needs to stay off for 48 hours.
If she feels sick and is unwell then she needs to stay off so she can get well and also to stop spreading germs to other children and members of staff.
Attendance is a school issue that the head needs to keep on top of to stop truants etc, not genuinely sick children. I can’t believe you’re considering sending a sick child into school.

My year 10 son currently has 84% attendance thanks to scarlet fever and a nasty cold which triggered his reactive arthritis. Social services not called and his school is crazy obsessive about attendance. Don't worry about it. Also, please keep your child off school if they're ill, they won't learn if they're feeling crap, plus you have no idea what they could pass on to a much more vulnerable child.

Some people can't afford to risk a fine..COL crisis anyone?

I would be blunt and say they have 2 choices, keep ill child off and prevent infection spreading or they can have child in but you won't be picking up, they can deal with it!

I have 3 kids in 3 schools. 2 schools mark sickness as authorised and 1 mark it as unauthorised which I find a bit ridiculous.

That said, if my kids are too sick for school they stay off and I'm quite strict with allowing time off.

My daughter has come home early 2 days in a row now, so likely will be off tomorrow. It is what it is. The teacher who called me today said "they're dropping like flies, just exhausted" so school must recognise there is an issue.

Oh and I deal with social services in my job & trust me I cant often get them to take on genuine welfare concerns let alone something like this

sickness is authorised but it does bring the attendance figure down.
schools have to send less out when attendance drops below the threshold regardless of whether it’s authorised absence or unauthorised.
there will be families who need those letters as if further action is needed they need proof they gave followed the protocol.
for genuine sickness I wouldn’t give it another thought and do what’s right for your child not the attendance %.
it’s standard 48 for sickness anyway so if you sent your child back in sooner than 48 hours they would be sent home again.

My boys are at Secondary school. They seem to have upped the anti on sickness absence this school year (suspect some stupid edict from department for education)
My youngest had a week off as very unwell with a nasty bug (not covid). This being in the first term means his attendance dropped below the magic 95% *to 94.83%
So I then get this soulless letter from school telling me if he has any further sickness it must only be with medical proof and I must attend a meeting to discuss all this sickness with the head of year. If not I will get a fine.
Well I refused the meeting (as due to postie strikes I received the letter with less than 24hrs notice) and requested they rearrange it.
Low and behold by the time they sort themselves out his attendance has risen above 95%
What a waste of teacher/admin time. Totally understand nipping persistent absenteeism in the bud but kids get sick. Dragging sick kids into school makes more kids sick, which increases absenteeism and round and round we go.
Honestly ignore their daft letters. If your child is sick keep them at home.

I actually think that overall attendance would probably improve if people stopped sending their ill kids in to spread bugs about.

I mean I know they need to keep an eye on certain pupils attendance but it's so stressful if you have a child who's had a bad run of sickness and then you get a threatening letter as the cherry on top.

It’s literally a requirement that if a child throws up you keep them off for 48 hours.

Coughing in the night however typically does not warrant time off.

And THIS is why other kids get ill, and our vulnerable kids and adults are dying!

You would rather force your own child into school feeling ill, than stand up for yourselves in the face of a fine? give your head a wobble and grow a pair.

Your not just asking your daughter to spend a day unable to learn because she feels ill. You are spreading things to other children and their families. Some of which may not survive whatever comes their way. I can wholeheartedly promise you that, after spending the last week watching a machine breathe for my Mum.

Absolutely nothing will happen at under 98% op. Or they'd be sending the letters to half the school.

My daughter gets letters sometimes in autumn when the statutory letter gets triggered - it think it is somewhere around 80%.

I checked with the school about it the first time and they said not to worry - just ignore it as nothing will happen unless school register a concern. And since they know she has asthma and most children with that trigger the letter in the autumn term nothing will happen.

There's just something so wrong with sending these letters out. All it does for the majority of parents whose kids have been genuinely ill is make them even more stressed and worried.

And is there any evidence that it has any effect on the small percentage of parents who just cba to send their kids in? I'd guess not. And surely a better use of resources would be for the school to identify these families and offer them support, rather than wasting paper and postage costs.

My dd has a nasty chest infection and has been off school since Friday.

We saw the GP last night and she was asking him if she could go back to school tomorrow - she’s terrified of her attendance going down and “letting down the class”. Our GP is lovely and gently told her that she needs to be in bed until her temperature is under control and her medicine is working and not to worry about school.

Shes in year 4 and this is the most unwell she’s been in her life and she’s sitting down working out attendance percentages and worrying what her percentage will be on the end of term letter.

All her school go on about is attendance, we get weekly emails, they get golden time in class for it. If they are too sick to be in school it makes them feel awful, such a guilt trip.

One of my boys never had over 96% attendance and often much lower than that. I just threw the letters away. If they are sick they are sick, attendance doesn't matter at all.