An attendance meeting at school for 5 days off since September

[Am898]

DD is 5. Since September she's had 5 authorised sick days off with today being one of them. This has been spread out for weeks and been sickness bug etc she's only had 2 days off in a row for a nasty sickness bug and the other 3 days she's not well enough to be in school.

Schools just rang me and said I need to book an attendance meeting as her attendance is too low now.. aibu to think this is a bit daft.. she's 5 years old and been off sick a few times, what does an attendance meeting entail 🤔

She's always at school on time and every time she has been sick it's been authorised as I've rang the office straight away so I'm feeling a bit confused now

There is a big push around attendance at the moment at the behest of the government and it is now something ofsted will look at. I'm a teacher and a parent of a reception child who has been ill a lot. This is one of the worst terms for illness especially for little ones. At my school we get in touch and arrange meeting with families when their child's attendance is below 95% which 5 days is. I would attend the meeting and simply explain what's going on. If you don't engage it will cause more issues long term.

If you don't engage it will cause more issues long term.

Curious as to what issues these are?

Ever had to do a ‘back to work’ interview for a couple of days off sick from work? Sounds like a similar thing. Just a formality to make sure they’ve completed their admin.

School are just doing their duty to follow up on absence, as 5 days in one term will have brought her overall percentage down a fair bit. They have to check as some children will be kept off of school for unnecessary reasons. Schools are under a lot of pressure when it comes to attendance and have to show they’re doing all they can to make sure that those able to be in school are there. Much better for you to engage with it, will be a quick meeting. They won’t want to be there longer than necessary!

Really wouldn’t advise going down the route of being deliberately difficult as some have suggested. It won’t change the policy and it’ll just make life harder for those who have to enforce it when they have many other things to do. Plus, you want to build good relationships with the school at this early stage, not break them down.

Me too.
You are the parent. If you decide your vomiting child stays at home, then they do. It’s called parenting, and common sense. You have already given reasons for absence to the school and you are fully aware of the relevant policies. What is the point of taking an unwell child to school, only for the school to call you back when they have spread the bug?
Progress won’t be harmed by that number of days off; most stuff is repeated ad nauseam at that age.

Exactly. I'm wondering if the 'issues' down the line would be the school claiming the parent was failing to engage, even though they have clearly said why they were off. I get how absence management is a part of safeguarding and can help build a picture and a pattern, but surely a parent sadly intent on harm would just play along in many cases anyway, i don't see it as a reason to disbelieve/pester parents who have said their children were genuinely off sick. I think not just from my experience the extent schools push explains why some parents with very poorly children I've cared for get so upset and stressed by it, when really it shouldn't be something they're having to worry about at all.

If you don't engage it will cause more issues long term.

Oh yeah, such as?

Schools are not forced, they are advised and even though they are given a large variety of ideas by Ofsted to deal with attendance they always deal with it the same way - heavyhandedly. May be we should let Ofsted know this at the next inspection using our 'parents voice'.

Schools are under intense pressure from Ofsted to show they are doing something about poor attendance. The meeting will be minimal and will tick a box to show Ofsted they are doing something.

So, parents should comply with the charade - and if they don't....there will be long term issues?

I would imagine it is more that it is 4 separate occasions in one term rather than the number of sick days

So if it's just a tick box exercise why exactly should parents take time off work to play along? My company has a meeting policy which is basically "Do you really need to hold this meeting? Could you be doing something more useful and productive instead?" These attendance meetings would be a hard fail on that test.

But maybe if we as a nation changed our attitude to colds and thought more how we acted in the pandemic (I’m not saying lockdown) then kids wouldn’t get 12 colds a year, I bet they didn’t get 12 during lockdown. Then there would be a lot less circulating and eventually would mean less time off sick all together!

Schools have to do this due to appalling attendance since covid. Sickness is now unauthorised as parents are using it as an excuse. Attendance which falls below 90% has to be investigated.

Don’t blame the school. They have to do this now. Blame the lazy parents who don’t want to leave the house to take their children to school.

My child was off school for 3 months following a serious injury that was entirely the fault of the school. The teachers concerned lied and attempted to cover it up. It was a very difficult time. They did not, however, dare to send me a letter about absence. I sent them an update in writing every week, a letter from my gp and the letter from the hospital where the MRI was done.
Not a peep out of them. I assume they lied about the attendance records.

My grand daughter has been off way more than 5 days. Her school has a policy that if they are vomiting or have the runs they have to stay off until they are clear for 48 hours.

I’m so sorry about your child’s accident. One of the reasons I left my job in a school was for something similar, the cover up made me feel sick to the stomach.

Illness is the prime reason for absence. What do you think is going to happen to attendance figures when we push sick kids into school and ignore the wide ranging impacts of that? It's certainly not good for kids, teachers or schools (or the workforce generally). It's certainly not good for the kids with long covid now.

That's a week she's missed out of 11 weeks so she's fallen below what's deemed acceptable. For some parents it's the start of a slippery slope, if it carried on for the year she'd have missed three weeks which is a lot. They're just asking you in to get across to you when she can and can't come in to school and the impact it has on friendships and education if it startd to become a habit.
Go along, tick the box and hopefully it'll never happen again.

”…a slippery slope” for what, exactly? Their child being unwell? How?

I think you'll find they just send their sick children into school, making others sick...

This is ridiculous given that it is so hard to get an appointment when you are seriously ill and there is a shortage of GPs.

Exactly that. Parents are stuffed really - work is king, so they send their sick kids to school when they really should be at home. Sucks for the kids, and for their peers who catch it from them.

I got a message near the end of the school year saying my son only had 96% attendance and they needed to archive 97%, I went in and asked how I could of improved that when in addition to only a 2-3 days of illness, 2 lates due to being less than 10 minutes late due to bus shortages (they are counted as half day absent if the are not in before the door shuts at 9am and it is only open for 10 minutes). he had 3 days off when he got concussion falling off a zip line on a school trip, which the school did not inform us about.

School attendance procedures are usually bonkers and counter productive.

They are not going to improve attendance by going heavy on people who have simply kept their children home who were ill.

But they will alienate parents who are normally supportive of school rules