Unauthorised absences wtf are we supposed to do!

[dreamingbohemian]

Surely everyone knows that it's nearly impossible to get GP appointments these days. And surely everyone understands that sometimes your DC are too unwell to go to school but not unwell enough to get an emergency appointment.

But my DC's school are now saying any absence that doesn't have medical evidence will be unauthorised. They will only accept things you can get from a GP, like an appointment card or prescription.

So what are we meant to do??? We are finishing the year being this close to persistent absence, which doesn't seem fair. We can't help it if DC was ill a lot this year, but with routine bugs that a GP would never see him for or prescribe anything (including norovirus -- are we meant to send him in and spread it then?)

AIBU to think this makes no sense?

(not school bashing here, they say they are just following policy)

I don't see how they could legally fine you for not providing evidence that it's literally impossible to get. How would that be legal

Things like a holiday booking is fairly obvious evidence. Hence why it's an easy target.

As for the council saying you need to rearrange appointments to fall outside school time, what planet are they on? I really do wonder about the calibre of people in local government, they seem to have no braincells at all.

As for rewards for good attendance - don’t get me started! Discriminatory bollocks and there is way too much focus on them. You can’t say “Don’t be ill!”

Another example where my son missed out because of his needs. School did a week long competition, come in on time 4 days a week you get a silver certificate and small prize. All week, Gold and entered into a big prize draw. Well my son missed the first day as he’d had a reaction to sleep medication. He made all other 4 days, in fact he goes to the early club and often in before many teachers. Did he get a certificate? Did he hell.

No just the attendance people. I would be happy to talk to anyone else if it would help.

Quite envious you have moors to walk on : )

I'm definitely going to keep track of everything next year so can demonstrate we do care about all this.

This is getting so annoying.

I was at an induction evening yesterday for DD's secondary school and they must have spent 50% of the time rattling on about attendance. We had 3 meetings with different staff and they all talked about it at length - how they are aiming for 100% attendance for all and that being 'a bit ill' is not a good enough reason to be off school.

My DD has always had great attendance, but I couldn't help thinking about less fortunate children with low immunity or regular hospital appointments. I support SEN children as part of my job and they have regular therapy appointments and hospital appointments that you can't just rearrange for after school - particularly when school ends at 4pm.

It feels like discrimination. It probably is discrimination.

Have we learned nothing from Covid about sending sick children into schools to spread their germs about?

I thought so too, especially as quite a lot of students have much worse attendance apparently.

DC knows that because they post people's attendance rates in the classroom which while we're here, that doesn't sound very legal either, does it.

If the biggest selling point of your school and the biggest focus is 'the kids turn up every day' than that doesn't really bode well for priorities, does it?

Same.

For posters who are asking what the attendance levels are - it doesn’t matter!

Just because your child may have been fortunate not to catch things or have an ongoing medical condition it doesn’t apply to every child.

Anyone can have a bad year, healthwise. Or be susceptible to catching things and taking longer to recover. Or develop an ongoing medical condition.

If the parents are in contact with the school and there are no concerns about the child or their work then stressing out families when they are already dealing with illness is a huge waste of everyone’s time. It does no good to tell me my child has missed x number of lessons and this will affect their grades - yes, I know! No-one would choose to be ill. And I’ve already reassured the school that we’ll be working to catch up on missed work etc.

And a hollow laugh to schools saying get appointments outside of school hours. Yes, in an ideal world! But when you’ve been waiting months for a referral there is no choice in what you are given. Again, the schools do know this is too much to ask of the NHS but they do it anyway - because of the all-consuming attendance figure pressure.

Sorry, I meant how can they fine you for not providing medical evidence of illness, when it's not possible to get that evidence.

I'm reassured by posters saying it's highly unlikely to get fined for medical absence, it's more the holiday thing that gets fined.

As the parent of a child with EBSA I'd be livid at that. We go through hell trying to get our DC into school.

Surely that's a breach of GDPR?! If you plan to complain, I would add that. I've worked in 5 schools and have never seen something like this. Attendance, especially in primary school, is never in the control of the child and should not be the basis for praise or sanction.

Nothing; just don’t worry about it; you are unlikely to go to jail

I would be surprised if the local GP surgeries agree with this. Just because it’s council policy doesn’t mean it’s NHS policy. Especially as there is a move to get people with minor illnesses to self care or go to the pharmacist. I’d write to the GP surgery, ask if they know all local schools are being advised to book unnecessary appointments and then let them fight it out between themselves.

Yes, @LoveSummerNotIcecream We did this - rang the surgery and spoke to the practice manager, who had no idea the school was telling parents to get evidence from GPS.

He was very clear that the NHS did not support this and provided his contact details for the school to ring him. I have no idea if the school took him up on the offer - I suspect not because it is all so disconnected. Leaving parents in the middle trying to navigate it all - while their child is sick.

My child had 92% this year, they were all very ill this year due to viral infections coming back with a vengeance. After a snotty comment from the teacher I started sending my DC in whilst clearly ill and they started calling for me to collect by 9.00am. When I'd log the next day of sickness I'd write "still ill with viral infection after being sent home yesterday/X date" so I had a clear log of it.

Horrible to have to do that but I saw no other choice when the school started emailing parents about attendence and it being passed onto the council. When approached they had no suggestion of what I should do if my child is feverish for at least a week every half term throughout winter and spring.

We had this with DS1 in primary school, he has ASD, Atypical Asthma and severe allergies and at the time he was going through his assessment, we had loads of appointments with CAMHS, OT, SALT and some were outside school hours. We waited 2 and a half years for these assessments so there was no way I was cancelling any appointment.

We had a week off for Chicken Pox, it went through his class and he had a few days for an allergic reaction. (Anaphylaxis). We sent in appointment letters, hospital discharge letters and copies of prescriptions.

We then had an incident at school, at pick up time I was shocked to find my 8 year old in the midst of an Asthma attack. Atypical Asthma presents differently, he coughs and coughs until he is sick then carries on coughing. The school knew this, it was in his Asthma action plan. He had started coughing after lunch and they left him. I took him straight to A and E as he was unable to say a few words let alone a sentence and he was admitted for Nebulisers and steroids.

A week later I got a letter as his attendance was 91% it's not a surprise to say I wasn't impressed, in-fact that was an understatement. I understand its ridiculous OFSTEAD targets but my childs health is more important, as I told them when I complained to the Goveners.

Very interesting info from the posters who have pointed out the GDPR compliance issues around schools holding this data too. Thank you for this info, will definitely raise with our school if this issue happens again. Where are they storing this data? Are they even permitted to?

@Ifartglitterybaubles That's horrific. Out of interest, what did the governors say?

I just tell school that that their admin is their business, not mine.

If they threaten to mark an appointment as an unauthorised absence, I tell them that they can fill in they're registers how they like, I have no idea why they think I would care.

It is such a bizarre thing to ask parents to care about. If marking a particular letter on the register bothers them so much, they should write another one. Just leave me out of it.

School management and OFSTED seem to live in some sort of fantasy land nobody else inhabits, doctors note? Can't even remember the last time I saw a GP face to face, when I put an enquiry into them online normally takes two days just to get a response.

I agree with this.

Its really not worth being stressed about.

There is one silver lining - one of my dc can throw up at will. School would send him home for 24 hours. He was absolutely fine, had been upset about a playground squabble. This happened repeatedly, with attendance dipping. And then magically they realised that if it's not a bug he can stay!

For my hig school DC I was also asked for Dr note and I said I wouldn't as it costs £20. Plus Dr didn't want too. They backed off quickly and that was that. I have no interest in whether it's authorised/un

I would speak to the practice manager at your GP practice and gently suggest that they may want to speak to the school. My husband recently had to send an email out to a few local schools telling them to put an end to this nonsense and that their attendance problems should not impact on his staff and appointment availability. There simply aren’t enough doctor’s appointments for rubbish like this.

To be fair to schools, the DfE are currently obsessed with attendance because it’s one of those ministerial bug bears.

Which translates into head teachers coming up with stupid policies hoping to produce good enough figures to send to the DfE.

It doesn’t mean parents should accept this crap. Or that GPs will comply.

Children's attendance is stored via SIMS or another system, and yes they are allowed to keep it for various reasons.

It MUST be kept accurate though. They cannot mark a child down as unauthorised absence if the parent makes the correct contact to advise the child is ill.

If they do then they open themselves up wide to all sorts of further investigation - what evidence do they have that the child's absence has been unauthorised, what's the reason behind recording it as such, what steps are they taking to investigate unauthorised absences, are the safeguarding team involved etc.