I'm more of a lurker these days, but I had this issue and thought of you!
So we've have two letters from DS3 school saying he has too much time off sick. (context is ds1 and ds2 have virtually 100% attendance)
History is that in y5 and y6 DS3 had several long-lasting but unrelated illnesses/health issues - labyrinthitis, impacted constipation, indigestion, tonsillitis - three times. As well as normal coughs and colds. Each time, something that you thought he ought to get over in a week or two he was poorly for much much longer.
So now he's in secondary school and he had a couple of days off twice in the first term with tonsillitis...the second time, he was sent home by school as not well enough to attend. So end of Jan, we get the first letter from school saying his attendance was a worry. The following week they sent him from school as he was nauseous and he never got any better all week so we kept him off - for the whole week.
After half term we got a second letter from school saying his attendance was now below 92%, and that any future absences will be unauthorised unless there is appropriate medical evidence.
We went into the school and they confirmed that any further ill health absences that are unauthorised will result in the local education authority being involved. And so we need to take him to the doctors to get appropriate medical evidence. On the first day off sick. For anything that you might think is enough to keep him off school but not enough to require a visit to the gp, he now needs to be seen by the gp to satisfy the school. I'm really cross about how powerless I feel.
Employers have learnt that they can't expect unreasonable amounts of evidence for employees...they take into account the evidence from each period off sick, don't require medical evidence for a single day off sick and observe evidence of patterns (the Friday or Monday sickies...) But school requires medical evidence of anything under 90% attendance, even if the initial 10 or so days were 'justified' - because he had a prescription or at least in part the absence was based on schools own assessment that he wasn't well enough to be in school...
Anyone else got any experience of similar circumstances. Everyone I've talked to who has anything similar has a child with one longstanding chronic issue where the school say 'oh yes, that one medical issue is evidenced so we can take a pragmatic view of absences and don't need to involve the LEA'. What if your predominantly healthy and happy child doesn't thrive each time they get an illness?