To think attendance messaging has become insane?!

[JustDiscoveredBueno]

Schools are germ pits. DfE's answer? Make them even more so...cos having more sick kids and staff (if possible) helps attendance and education!!!! Everyone knows that you learn at your best when you're ill or spreading illness.

We didn't get parents evening because the teacher has been off sick so much this year and might be back after Easter. The temporary teacher despite doing most of the teaching since September is not allowed

That is messed up on so many levels. It's great that the headteacher tries to look out for everyone, but actually, it highlights how ridiculously low and warped the bar is now. It's so very very reasonable what she's doing - that she has to fight to do it is really wrong.

@Cupofteaandbiscuits that must have been very frightening. Hope you are all ok now.

I'm so glad I home educate!
Come join us!!

I absolutely agree OP. I'm a teacher (primary) and the parent of a reception child and it's totally ridiculous. Children get ill, parents don't generally want them to be off. If there are underlying issues it seems like a great way to burn bridges. We're trying to take a sensible approach to things at my school and not put more pressure on families. DS's school isn't like that and they are unhappy about his 'low' attendance (94%).

It seems that if schools want to, they can take a more reasonable approach then.

We are in similar position, are daughter has just started school but has a complex medical condition, so many hospital appointments with Paediatrician, orthopaedics and two specialist hospitals in London. I couldn't believe it when I got the letter that kids with medical conditions were held to the same standards on attendance as children without! I actually started a petition and instagram and am looking for Parents/Carers who will support either just by signing or sharing, recording a short video to say why this should change or providing an anonymous quote. You can also write to your local MP to ask them to raise this in parliament. I did do this and she has written to the education secretary on my behalf. The guidance on the attendance policy is being made statutory in August and I am really hoping they will change it so medical absences are recorded differently and not counted in the data for persistent absence. I don't think I can link to the actual petition itself because of mumsnet talk guidelines but for anyone interested here is a link to the instagram which has more details https://www.instagram.com/persistently_absent/

School newsletter sent home last Friday says that medical appointments, dentist, optician etc should be out of school time (good luck there). If not, the child should attend school for their mark around the appointment. Which shows that all the concern for education, every minute matters etc is BS, it's just about statistics.

I did also only recently discover that so long as the child is there for registration times they are marked as present even if they leave straight after!?!? the policy is so full of contradictions I wonder what they are really aiming for. Note this only applies to state schools too. An acquaintance with a child in private school was shocked when I mentioned the policy as she had only ever received a "hope they recover soon" from the school when her child has had to take time off for illness! It's really the lowest rung to stamp on people that already have it harder but in my view completely beyond to start laying on this kind of pressure and essentially indirect discrimination to kids from reception year. I've posted the petition in the petition and activism section on here. Please consider signing and sharing to raise awareness for how wrong this is!

Indeed! So much time at school is lost walking from one class to the next, getting books out, settling down, putting books away and on to the next one.

Generally, 2 - 3 hours a day 1-1 is the homeschool equivalent of being in school.

My son has a medical condition whereby any illness has the possibility to be dangerous. We have clear advice from the hospital that any sign of illness he should stay at home from school. Obviously the more parents who send children in when they aren’t well enough leads to children like him who are vulnerable missing even more school.

the problem with broad policies like these is they don’t care about the underlying reasons for a absence, they don’t look why someone is persistently absent they just judge them for it.

(thankfully DS school is very understanding to be fair!)

I'm sorry to hear this because you are in such a difficult situation. Do the school send work home when your son needs time off or is he too ill to be able to do it? but I completely agree the policy is ableist and makes things even harder for people that already have it harder.

We have three children. Two children finished primary and secondary school in England.
They never reached the wanted % attendence. Headteacher wasn't fond of me. Always argueing. GP was tired of the school as I refered them to her. Both childrens' GCSE/A levels were excellent.

The youngst child is in a Scandinavian school after a few years in a Scottish primary with a less angry headteacher as we relocated during covid. Not that focused on attendence which is nice.

I really don't care. If our children are sick or poorly they stay at home. None of the school's business.

Yes. Good luck there... True. Never going to happen as these people work Mon-Fri // 9am - 3pm.

I often had to remind Headteacher it was inconvient to us as well (most parents are at work during school hours).

I work in a school and am responsible for overseeing attendance. For what it's worth, I don't disagree with you. But I think many parents don't realise that schools have very little autonomy when it comes to managing attendance. We are under huge pressure from the Department of Education and Ofsted to crack down on non-attendance and the Local Authority are increasingly putting pressure on us to fine the parents of children who are persistently absent. We have so far refused to do this but are continually having to justify our position.The LA check our attendance figures and quiz us about individual children whose attendance is concerning, so we have to evidence that we are doing everything we possibly can to get them into school. We also have to demonstrate 'whole school approaches' to improving attendance which is why we can't do what several pp have suggested and only send communications about punctuality and attendance to individual families.

Our whole school attendance is actually higher than the national average so I dread to think how much scrutiny schools in more challenging catchment areas must be under.

It is difficult as we know persistent absence is a growing problem nationally. I have no doubt that the majority of parents want their kids in school but it is a fact that we have seen a marked increase since covid in parents taking kids out for lengthy term time holidays, as well as kids who have at least one day off every single week with coughs, colds and other minor illnesses. We also have a growing number of parents who openly admit to keeping kids home because they're a bit tired, because they have a lesson they don't like that day or because they don't want to walk them to school in bad weather. Teachers are spending a great deal of time trying to catch them up, which impacts the whole class, but the gap between these kids and their peers just keeps getting wider if their attendance doesn't improve. For a handful of our persistent non-attenders we also have safeguarding concerns and we worry that they are not safe, supervised or fed properly at home but social services don't do anything and the LA attendance team just keeps telling us to fine them.

We have a couple of kids with serious underlying health conditions that impact their attendance (one is unlikely to live past his teens sadly) and we have been asked by the LA attendance team what we are doing to improve their attendance and told that we need to chase their parents for a letter everytime they have an appointment.

Agree. Not voting Tory for this reason. (Among the 1000 of others). The stress of having an ND child and then this hounding on top, it’s beyond the pail. And often a woman’s problem to sort out.

This is so good to read! my daughter has only just started school and she will have to miss school more than others because she has a health condition. I do think as you say they should focus on actual grades and achievement though. If the grades are going down they could then look at attendance and make a plan with parents how they could collaboratively make efforts to improve, rather than all this hostility and threats it just causes friction for no good reason. The thing is I had actually been thinking her attendance was really good as she had only been ill once! (plus a day) when I know in reception kids are constantly ill with bugs going round. We get so many letters about various lurgies going through the school, I thought she was doing great on attendance!

This is really interesting to read (I've got a petition running which is posted on here in the petitions section so this thread is so good to hear various view points). I think there is a serious problem if the LA is trying to improve the attendance of someone that is terminally ill (and this is the whole reason I have made the petition there is nothing you can do as a school or parent to improve attendance when the absences are for medical reasons). But the points about "real" persistent absence for the examples you gave would in the majority of cases be unauthorised by the school (holiday, rainy day, off day , disliking lesson) and if it happens repeatedly and there are warnings that it could lead to a fine these are the instances which I think the policy is aimed at. The problem is they have lazily lumped all absence into one and tried to use the same approach to tackle everything which just doesn't work. Where there is safeguarding issue what approach do you take to put support in place ? as this is supposed to be the first line rather than straight to fine ( I appreciate and believe what you are saying re LA but am very interested to know what really happens in this circumstance as for us no support was offered as I have read should be, just a letter to say my daughters attendance was nearing the mark for persistant absence and would be monitored)

Just to counter all the negative experiences, my Y4 child missed 10 days between September and December due to coughs and accompanying illness (the last instance landed her in A&E and she's since been diagnosed with allergy related asthma). I obviously kept the school informed and her two siblings never had an instance of illness at the same time - so 2 out of 3 kids were in school - but we never received anything? No automatic letter, nothing.

Luckily DC hasn't suffered academically and went on to have just 1 day off with illness in the spring term.

Not sure how we managed to escape the dreaded attendance warning to be honest as even though I kept in touch with the school, they said as her attendance was so low it would automatically trigger a letter at least.

@romanatonic I signed the petition. Earlier this year the only way I could have got DS into school would have been to detach his drip and oxygen and discharge him from hospital. The whole thing of penalising illness is absurd.

I agree and thank you for signing. I'm lucky that my local MP also does and she has submitted both a written question to the Education secretary as well as a letter outlining our situation. There have only been generic responses so far completely toeing the party line and regurgitating their nonsensical tag line "some children face greater barriers to attendance...Their right to an education is the same as any other pupil and therefore the attendance ambition for these pupils should be the same ..." what is this supposed to mean!? parents/carers are denying the kids their education by taking them to necessary medical appointments? Honestly who writes this stuff !? luckily she is keeping going with this. If you or anyone else reading this wants to push more, please share or take part in bringing this to more people's attention via the instagram https://www.instagram.com/persistently_absent/ all posts are sharable and I am looking for video's from signees or even just quotes to use. Please also think about writing to your own mp's. If they keep getting letters they will have to listen, even the house of commons education committee have made reference to these issues in their report "Persistent absence and support for disadvantaged pupils" so it is not impossible! 🙂

Some childrrn can't help having medical appointments. Often you are lucky to get an appointment at all, so getting one out of school hours isn't easy.

We found primary easier than high school for not being marked absent when there was sn appointment. In primary if they were there at morning or afternoon registration they got their mark.

High school has 5 lesson per day. Lesson 4 starts at 12.20, lunch is at 1.20, and lesson 5 is at 2pm.

If you manage to get an appointment that means missing lesson 5, they are classed as being absent for the afternoon, even if they were in the lesson that started at 12.20.

To me 12.20 is pm, so there ard teo lessons in the afternoon, even if only one us after tge lunch btlreak. If present for either of the lessons after 12.20 they shouldn't be marked as absent for the whole afternoon.