Absence and Late Forms in Primary Schools

[Kate6490]

The governments policy on fining parents for unauthorised absence from schools drives me bonkers and I have settled on a policy of direct action in protest. I hope others follow. Firstly, why is it necessary for a parent to have to 'beg permission' for authorised absence when they want only to act in the best interests of their child. I have three children, the older two are educated privately, the youngest is at a village state primary. I have never had to 'ask permission' for absence from the private school, and of course if I felt it necessary to remove them from school for a day because I judged it to be in their best interest, the school would never dream of trying to say 'no' or fining me, but if I do the same with my youngest, I've been told I am likely to be refused authorised absence (without giving rhyme and reason which is then judged by goodness knows who) and either authorised absence is awarded or it is not, in which case if I still remove them, then it is 'unauthorised' and makes me subject to fine at the Headmaster's discretion. (£50 per parent, per child). This is ludicrous. I am the parent and the highest authority where my child's well being is concerned. If I think it is in my child's best interest to attend a religious ceremony, an important family event, a hard to get orthodontal appointment, or to take up the chance of joining Mum or Dad on a 2 day business trip to Paris of somewhere as an exceptional, once in a child's lifetime chance to have 1 on 1 abroad with a parent, then that is my call and I do not expect my reasons to be judged by someone completely outside the family. Consequently, what I do now therefore is simply 'not comply' with any absence form - and I don't even send in a courtesy note to say where my child is or when they will be back (as I would have done prevously). I simply text 'sick' to the school office. Sad but true - well done governnment policy - another complete breakdown of the parent/school trust and communcation agenda. If the government wants to reduce habitual absence then it should go after the serial offenders, not penalise the whole population.

Bring back the schoolboard man.

Unauthorised absences (parent-assisted truancy) have become a real and difficult problem for head-teachers in recent years. Few state school head-teachers, in reality, will refuse your child a day for something like a funeral or other important exceptional event. It's the type of person who whisks their child off for a fortnight in the sun just because they find school holiday prices too high that this is designed to stop.

I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

also, late forms - they drive me bonkers too. I arrived at school last week at 0902 (12 minutes late). I was told to fill in a form giving a written explanation for my lateness. I refused (naturally). I have been schlepping into that school for the past 6 years (first with my two eldest, then with my youngest). I guess I've been late no more than 5 times EVER ... I am 48 years old, have three children, a business, two homes and a very busy agenda - I do not expect to have to write down for some bureacratic why I was running 10 minutes late on any one, RARE occasion. If truth be told I'd had to run my eldest into her school (30 miiles away) as there was some drama that needed my attention in the locker rooms. I thought I'd have the time to get back in time to get my youngest in, but I probably had 2-3 red lights run against me annd a queue at the junction and 'lo' I ran a little late - it happens - get over it and cut other adults the slack they have earned through punctual attendance year on year and stop irritating them with a bunch of ridiculous forms. If you want to catch habitual late attenders then target them individually and don't be such cowards.

I assume you yourself were on a once in a lifetime trip to Paris when the lessons in paragraphing were going on.

Perhaps its a molehill to you, but it's a mountain to me - in principle as well as practice. There is a great deal of ground between two weeks in the sun and a mum trying to get her child up to Scotland for a grandparents 80th birthday celebration and being refused Friday absence to travel. Believe me - it happened. Unfortuanately headmaster's parameters of judgement are not especially transparent and that judgement seemed especially harsh in light of the fact that in the same week another parent was authorised 3 days off to visit Santa in Lapland with her two youngest.

Sorry but your reaction sounds totally petty to me. You don't like the rules so you make things as difficult as you can. Is that a good example to set to your children about how to deal with situations you don't like?

Schools have to deal with large numbers of absent children, each with parents who will have their own priorities about what counts as a "good enough" reason for keeping them off school. The teacher of your child's class will therefore have to deal from one day to the next with pupils who missed maths, so don't know what to do, who missed a chapter of the book, so don't know the story, who missed being told about things that are happening. The teacher isn't free to teach the class, but has to focus on all these things. Your child will suffer too!

You cannot make a verb out of a noun. There is no such word as 'paragraphing' - or perhaps you are American - in which case you can make anything you like out of grammatical miscontruction.

I hereby award you the order of the golden for services to pedantry. Treasure it well, I don't hand out many.

Fortunately not! She's bright enough to be able to miss a day for exceptional circumstance on my best judgement without coming to grief in terms of educational attainmment. In terms of examples set, compliance with a system that is so clearly flawed and so poorly thought through is not a lesson I wish to pass on the next generation. In my view it is always necessary to stand up for things that clearly are not right.

That is richly comic. You are obviously more than qualified to judge when pedantry is apparent. Should I remind you that it was you that started with the grammatical nitpicking.

Thank you, ominolap. You are a true friend. I've run out of order of the (second class) so join me in a instead.

You're right OP, the rules are clearly meant for the other plebs, and not for your 'bright' DD.

Ah well, enjoy your wonderful glow of superiority, where you obviously don't have to be subject to the same rules as everyone else. And enjoy the moments in the years to come when your DC realise this means they have the right to ignore any of your rules if they feel a need to "stand up for" their own will against yours.

Kate6490.
The rules governing being absent in state schools is set by the STATE. Private schools set their own curriculum/rules. That's the difference.

Oh did you also know you can get an ASBO for your behaviour!

Oh stop nitpicking the lot of you and go back to school! Cheers!

To complimentary

Sorry all - had to break off there to go and do something more important instead .. however, in response to your last ...

.... and that is exactly why, thank god, there is a private sector, so that people like me who do not agree with the mantra dictated by the state can simple 'step out' of it. No, I don't believe the state knows better than I do on issues to do with my child's welfare. Yes, I have (to date) managed some success in parenting and have found that my older daughters do not feel the need to ignore my rules as they know I act with their welfare at the centre of all I do.

What I have learnt as a result of my trial run with the state primary system is to 'play the system' until it becomes intolerable, and then to just simply opt out when it suits me. I don't think you can get an ASBO for reporting your child sick, at least not when I last looked, and a 7 year old invariably can muster up a bit of a tickly throat or tummy bug if required to, to justify a day of absence. I eventually received a written letter of apology from the Headmaster over the issue of written explanation for 10 minutes of lateness, quite rightly too. The office and school were far too 'quick off the mark' with that one and it was clearly unreasonable to expect me to give a written explanation for a 12 minute lateness, on the first occasion in well over a year - but thank you all for your helpful comments - I hope you will enjoy long and happy relationships with the DES whilst your parental rights and authority are slowly whittled away until it no longer exists. If this is how you feel about absences, goodness knows what reaction I'd hear if I raised the other issues I deal with on a daily basis such as the tolerance of hair nits in school, having one's child's lunch box inspected or the whole raft of health and safety claptrap that abounds in the state sector. Very soon now our great and glorious state will be able to raise our chidren from cradle to grave and all we shall need to do is be the baby carriers.

OP. I agree with you whole heartilly! It's one of the reasons I shall send my son to a public school. The private schools don't have to adhere to a PC, child centred doctrine. If you saw my on of my other posts I also have questioned the school, but it was on marking homework. My son attends an 'outstanding' state school. Yet they see fit to have guidelines in marking, if your child makes 20 spelling mistakes in an essay. The teacher only has to mark up to 4 mistakes, and does not have to correct all the grammar and other mistakes. It's to late for me to send my son to a prep school now, I'm bloody glad we have had tutoring and I'm sure he'll get into one of the public schools we have chosen. The state schooling also system denigrates this country, and our history (if it's taught!) A public school I visited had a cutting up from a newspaper. 'The religious war that made this country great'.(The Crimean War). Would they have had this up in a state school? NO. Too PC. I look up to heavens and say thank goodness I can send him privately! Cheers

Some private schools insist on parents seeking authorisation from the head before any absence other than sickness. They can be just as authoritarian as any state school (and in more arcane ways, if so minded).

Kate: you don't sound remotely happy with either the philosophy or practice of the state system. You mention stepping out of it: I hope you manage that quickly.

So, are you suggesting that because you've only been late a couple of times and you've only taken your lo out of school a couple of times, you should get preferential treatment? Rules is rules, I'm afraid and I assume that by sending your DD to this school, you signed up for them.

Um, you do sound rather hysterical!

The Head has little leeway about what can be agreed as 'authorised absence' so many bsences that parentys choose will be marked down as 'unauthorised'.

But the parent of a child with a generally good attendance record won't get fined.

You take it so very personally about the late forms - it may be useful for the scjhool to be able to monitor why particlular students are late - you were late, just put 'issues at other school', what's the big deal?

It is parents and the attitude 'my child, my rules, my cheap holiday' that have prompted all this!

And actually a £50 fine for a day off is cheaper than paying £12k a term to do what the hell you like!

Though my friends and I were hauled to the front of the stage in assembly at my private school and paraded as girls who had taken time out of school fo a holiday, so you may well generalise about private schools attitudes.

There is a debate to be had about power, schools and the nanny state, but can we turn the volume down?

Isn't it not common courtesy to write an absence note?

No preferential treatment required, just fairness, respect, acknowledgement that I and so many other parents at the school have only the best interests of the children, our children, at heart and a desire to feedback when policy and practices detract from, rather than enhance parent/school relationships. Surely it is about dialogue and communication not policies and forms.

The school only has about 160 children for goodness sake, most of us live in the village, how hard can it be to actually talk to the few parents it applies to when absence or lateness becomes chronic? It is just bureaucracy run wild and when I 'signed' up for the school six years ago, the absence and lateness system didn't exist. It was imposed without any consultation with the parent body. I have fed back my views to the County Council on this and a number of other issues, but the response as always is formulaic, prescriptive and lacking in any sort of meaninful dialogue or consultation.

Yes, the private sector is an option, one which I have chosen to take for secondary education, but for as long as I can make the state work for me in a way that is remotely tolerable in the primary years, then I will use it. I am, after a tax payer, just like most other parents. If that means a little 'creative thinking' to work around systems that become flawed whilst I am 'in the system' then so be it. Once it becomes intolerable I shall switch. It is not about 'cheapness' or expense or wishing to do 'what the hell I like' it is about the quality of education for the children, mutual respect and an ability to work together with the staff I leave my child/children in the care of, and aspirations and a desire to teach what is important to me, and to pass on the values I and my family hold dear, to the next generations. 300,000 people in this country make considerable sacrifices in order to share that desire, they can't all be wrong - so thank god for choice.

Always common courtesy to write an absence note, and that is exactly what I used to do, but now no more. An absence note wasn't good enough. The state needed me to beg permission to act in what I believe is my child's best interest. Why do I need to request permission? From whom? When did it become necessary for a Mother to ask permission to make an appointment for her child in school hours if none other were available? I have no objection to courtesy notes. I have every objection to being forced into a position where I have to ask permission to make a decision on my child's behalf. Also, if you don't like the arcane approach of the private school you've chosen, then stop writing the cheques - that is the beauty of the private sector. It is all about choice and a free market economy.

Kate; from the tone of your post, your relationship with the school (and the state sector) seems irretrievably broken. You said you would move when it became intolerable - you really do sound at that point.