To think 99.7% attendance is better than good?

[Cluelessat33]

I got my daughters first end of year report on Friday. I was so proud of her, because on everything she was hitting targets, or being scored as exceptional..... except her attendance which was marked as good, grading as follows;

persistently absent, below 90%
Attendance concerning, below 95%
Below expectation, 95-97%
Good, 97-99%
Exceptional, maximum 100%

This blows my mind. The one occasion she was off was an afternoon, I was driving back from work in Liverpool, they caught me whilst driving home. My mum was looking after her, and I had to make a decision. I wasn't happy about her going home but they put pressure on me to have her collected so my mum picked her up to find she was right as rain.

I doubt many adults have that sort of work attendance, let alone 5 year old kids, with bugs flying here there and everywhere? My nephews attendance was raised as a concern one year, despite one stint being a hospital stay, and the other being told he could come in due to covid.

I understand why schools need to keep an eye on attendance, but seriously, what are we saying to kids with this. Who is going to manage 100%!?

I used to hate this at primary school too. Ours used to hand out certificates to kids with 100% attendance. At least that was all - some gave prizes for attendance. It just encourages people to ignore the 48 hour sickness rule and pass it on to everyone else.

Ok fair enough.

I've been in assembly when 100% attendance certificates were given out. There were enough that it would be pushing it to say that 100% was truly "exceptional". They do have to report attendance, and it perhaps does make sense to give people a sense of what attendance levels are concerning/good/exceptional; there are parents who would read 90% and think that sounds high - which it might be, for a child with underlying medical issues, but in some case is just because the parent keeps them off every time they're tired.

Don't set too much store on the exact wordings. At secondary, DD never got "exceeding expectations" for her best subject - because the school's expectations of her were high, so she was only "meeting expectations". (DD was actually quite disparaging about another subject where she did get "exceeding", because she felt the teacher's expectations should have been higher!)

Can't quite believe that this is even a thing and that so many of you seem to have come across it.

I've never known a school go do this. It's incredibly arbitrary and indicative of nothing.

I also can't quite get my head around anybody caring. I thought the OP was nuts to be honest and am really surprised at all the comments in agreement.

OP, it doesn't matter. Move on. Sounds like your daughter is doing great.

I completely agree to say over 99% attendance isn't excellent is absolute bollocks...

My kids were consistently 96% to 97% attendance for the first two or three years at secondary school... and then one of them dropped below 95% after a week off because she'd got tonsillitis. We got this right snotty letter from the school like she just had 6 weeks on the trot off.... It really fucking pissed me off ...

They said 'Below 95% is absolutely unacceptable and we might need to pass it on to the educational authority if it carries on...' It was 95% FFS! JUST FUCK OFF! After that I just didn't give a shit about keeping both of them off for day trips to the beach 4 or 5 times during May and June when the weather was nice and it wasn't busy (because school time!!!)

I did it no matter how many letters came in or emails from the school ... I just ignored them because they did consistently well in their school work and homework and exams and went on to have very successful degrees at university... So I thought 'they can kiss my fat ass!' DC's school REALLY fucked me off. SO glad to not have to deal with this fuckery now!

Oh the BELOW 95% was 94.5% by the way!

Ds was a persistent school refuser, on a good term he was lucky to have 60% attendance. It didn't stop him getting 9 good GCSE grades. Ignore any letters & scores on your dc reports. Gauge them on how healthy, happy & how they develop into a well rounded person. Schools are only bothered about attendance as it is a government tick box exercise.

This won't matter one jot on a few years. Don't sweat the small stuff!

My DDs have had years where they've had no sick days... and one year where one poor DD had a total of 13 days off sick... poor thing caught everything going- norovirus, scarlet fever, impetigo, colds, all from school except the scarlet fever! She didn't try any less that year, she was just unlucky.

The only reason the attendance figure matters is if you were constantly going on holiday or having days off for leisure reasons. I have a friend who regularly takes her out for long weekends for example.

Just don’t worry about it. Your child’s attendance is good. It is pretty obvious why the government have to to try to encourage parents to send their children to school as often as possible and on time. It isn’t personal to your child or to your child’s school.

Thing is 100% is exceptional. It's like an exception to the norm - very few people will get it. Don't sweat it. Be happy with the Good.

You round up so your daughter has 100% ie exceptional, surely? It really doesn't matter though.

You've never heard of schools monitoring. Attendence? Have you had children at an English state school or been to one?

@VisionsOfSplendour no, I haven't. My kids go to school in Scotland.

My child was much lower than that last year in reception due to chicken pox, covid and a couple horrible viruses. He started reception when the world went back to normal after covid and the school was like an actual cess pit. I remember thinking it was a joke to judge his attendance on the report when he had caught everything from school, and brought it all home to the point my husband's attendance got called into question at work!

I agree, it's madness to put such emphasis on attendance. Either we follow 48 hour rule or we strive for 100% attendance. Can't do both
Agree with this as a teacher and parent

There's always going to be some people who keep their children off school but they need a different approach.

The problem I have is when families who follow the rules and value attendance get harassed into bringing their children back to school too soon because they're lower hanging fruit than the families who have lots of '48 hour bugs' and awful attendance.

Might be why then...

It's stupid but they probably mark it that way to get higher attendance as they are judged on it.

Thankfully my kids school is the opposite of this, rated outstanding but no attendance awards or anything and the head is very much 'are they unwell? ah let them stay home for a bit' so doesn't feel like pressure to send them back too soon.

That would explain it then, no one who has anything to do with English schools could have said that 😀

The whole attendance thing is bollocks. They need to focus efforts on why so many people don't send their kids and stop with the generic lecturing.

If my kids ever got 100% attendance, in many years they were lucky not to get ill, we declined any attendance rewards because you shouldn't reward for luck.

You are taking this way too seriously. So she missed an afternoon. So what? It is not a judge of her character or indicator of future achievements. Just breathe and focus on the bits about her personality and actual achievements / progress through the year.

I agree that it's meaningless.
My kids' attendance is way better than their teachers', I might write them a report.

They're using OFSTED criteria.
100% attendance awards that come to school are from the EWO and LA - schools hate them too!