to be fuming about this letter from school about attendance ??

[NervousNutty]

Last term I had a very rude letter from school about ds's attendance. He was in yr1 at the time and his attaendance was 87%.

At the beginning of that year we had, had a holiday, which had been authorised (by old headteacher), so that accounted for 5 days. Ds was then ill several times, once with a scalp infection and virus, and then again with impetigo. He also probably had the odd couple of days here and there with sickness or bad cold/high temp etc.

I always notifed school when he was ill.

After I recieved the rude letter I was fuming and so was everyone else who had one because most people had kept their children off for genuine reasons. I was going to speak to the head about it, but so many people made appointments with her that I'd have had to wait weeks so I left it.

Ds has been back for 3 days and today came home with a letter adressed to me. This letter says that all parents have been written to, but this is a lie as not every pupil was given one.

It waffles on and on about attendance and how important it is (like i'm thick and don't know), and then basically lists a threats of what will happen if a childs attendance doesn't improve.
It also mentions that any child in the action group (which i assume ds now is) will recieve futher letters to make sure attendance targets are met.

I am so pissed off with this. If they bothered to check my other 2 childrens records they would see that their attendance is very good, so surely if I was doing it on purpose i'd keep them all off and stay in bed rather than still get 2 children up and off to school.

So basically now, if ds is ill and he has time off they are going to come down on me like a tonne of bricks.

I don't understand what you're getting so worked up about tbh.

The fact is the schools have to monitor attendance, as many people on this thread have said. A standard letter was generated by someone in the office, for all the pupils below whatever percent they felt was unacceptable.

It probably took her a long time to generate, print, get signed, folded, enveloped, stamped and posted. Time, that could probably have been spent better tending to pupils learning needs. I doubt she had time to sift through every file to check what everyone was off for!

If you can put your hand on your heart and say 'my kid was off for all the right reasons' then bin it and forget it!

tbh if I had a child who had various health issues and who was likely to have time off sick each year the last thing I'd do is plan a holiday in term time to compound that.

Morocco - if you're a teacher, surely you understand the impact missing school has on a child at whatever age? A pupil who misses just one lesson is going to need extra help in the ensuing lesson(s) to be able to catch up on work missed. Learning is frequently sequential and therefore missing one part could well lead to misunderstanding/not understanding with the next part. Not only is that child affected, but other children are also affected as the teacher's time is needed for that one pupil (to the possible detriment of others). I can't believe you're in teaching and don't see that?

But OFSTED will be your problem, when the school is marked down, therefore various fundings revoked, teachers leaving to work at a better performing school and learning distrupted for your lo's!

If you see no problem with that level of attendance, then your issues are with the bodies imposing attendance targets on schools, and not the schools themselves.

Nutty said in op that the family holiday was before the illness absences. So, unless she was psychic she wouldn't have been able to factor in the illnesses when booking the holiday.

But maybe a holiday after illness might do some children good in which case the holiday post-illness could have been beneficial.

NoahFence, would it really ruin the whole monitoring procedure if a note was attached to the letter as specified in my earlier post: "please ignore this letter if there is a genuine medical reason for your child's absence"??

I know perfectly well how much my dd's education is affected by chronic illness and how hard she has to work to keep up. A note as above would make me feel that the school understood how hard this knowledge is for us. And it's not just us: at dd's previous school the HT wrote snide comments about attendance on the school reports of two children who had been granted compassionate leave to spend time with their mum in her final illness.

Having said this, dd's new school are usually pretty good about making her feel understood.

As someone else has said, 87% equates to almost 1 day a week out. That is significant. I teach year 1 and an attendance that low will have an impact particularly if your child is one who has just started to get the hang of reading etc.
It will be a general letter - not sent to everyone but to those with attendance below a certain %.

I would have loved to have taken my dd out of school for a week's holiday after she had been struggling with pain and illness for month after month. I daresay it would have made her recover more quickly. But I never dared.

Oh Cory

morocco, do you teach infants? A phonics programme?

FGS we went on holiday before his illness (thanks for pointing that out juule). I cannot see into the future so had no idea he would have so many periods of illness that year.

I am not saying that I disagree with them writing to parents who's child has poor attendance but a) they know ds's was because he was ill, and b) why write to me again now when he has been back for 3 days, not having had any absences since the last letter ?

Obviously though I am a shit mother who keeps her son off school just for the fun of it despite knowing he is struggling in several areas.

Next time he has impetigo, I will send him in and the whole fucking school can have it.

I give up, I really really do, cos I cannot do right for doing wrong with fucking anything.

babylon

the school is doing what the lea tell them to do, despite you talking to head or whoever about illnesses.

Standard letter based on a %. lea are doing it cos the government tell them.

My dd had 87%, last year. Always ill, just a sickly kid.

And fwiw, I did not say that I thought that level of attendance was ok.

At the risk of being flamed for disagreeing...

If you hadn't had the holiday you'd have more leeway for illness. The fact is your child's attendance was affected by illness and a holiday that you had booked in term time. I think I would feel I had to suck up my annoyance at recieving the letter because the dc had had time off for a holiday, whether it had been approved by the head or not.

If it's automatic when a child's attendance falls below a certain % I wonder how many children will be recieving them because of time off they had for swine flu!

I am a school governor. I'm sorry that people get upset and offended by a standard letter, and of course children who are ill shouldn't be at school. But if you knew how many children have their education seriously compromised by their parents' inability to get them to school you might just be prepared to let a little of your upset and offence go. Their are children at our school who have such chaotic family lives that they miss nearly half their school time, because their parents have such crap circumstances that they can't get them to school. We have tried all other approaches with some, and, sadly, the "heavy" letter is some times the only thing that works. It's not aimed at the genuinely ill child, but it has to go to everyone.

Yes well, like I said I am a shit of a mother so it goes without saying that before booking that holiday I didn't give my child's education the slightest thought.

nutty - hope that comment wasn't aimed at me? I didn't mean I thought you were ignoring your child's education just that I'd feel I had to put up with the letter since I'd chosen the holiday if I was in your situation.

Yes it was aimed at you.

Well, I do think that taking holidays in term time are generally a mistake, But I really don't understand why you are so worked up over a form letter. Would you rather your school didn't give a fuck about which children were there or not?

I don't care anymore tbh seeker.

I do my best yet it is never ever good enough.

Nutty - this is AIBU

You know how it goes.

The sad fact is that some parents do take children out of school for the most ridiculous rasons: X's little sister farted and Y was traumatised so we kept him off school for a week! We decided to get a dog and it involved a 50 hour round trip on Sunday so we kept J off school today because she was so tired after the journey. I didn't have enough bread to make a packed lunch so had t keep F home for three days until I could go shopping! And I have only slightly exagerrated these! The best one was for the family of a child with SEN. The child had v.poor attendance anyway and then the famliy decided to book 'the holiday of a lifetime': two weeks in Australia during term time. On the day they were due back at school, the parent phoned in to say the children were unwell and would be off for another few days. Fair enough. Except that they were phoning us from Australia and it turned out their holiday had been planned to be three weeks all along! They thought that by lying they would have all the absences authorised. ( There were also implications for the SEN because she had a statement and under certain circumstances the LEA can withold the support).

I suspect that the letter you have receved is one that has been sent to parents of all children whose attendance was below a certain level last year. They will be hoping that for the majority of those, the absences were genuine and unavoidable, but that for the few where this was not the case, the letter will remind them that it is being monitored.

And Morocco, if a child misses even a few days at school, especially when they are learning 'the basics', there is so little time available to go back over things that they may miss them altogether and then they will be struggling. It is not fair on the child to put them in that situation if it is at all avoidable.