Attendance- is it measured over the whole school year or 'split' into terms?

[tiredemma]

My children came home with a letter yesterday stating that their attendance for last term was 76% and someone would be contacting me to discuss ways of improving this.
The letter does not give specific dates so i am currently waiting for an email with this information on. They had 5 days off from 26th Jan to visit grandparents in France.
Other than that they have had no other days off- is the attendance not normally measured over the entire school year in order to meet the 94% Average expected by OFSTED?

Ofsted look at attendance over the year.
Your school may choose to look at attendance on a half termly (which this must be) or termly basis.
It will be an "automatic" letter so I wouldn't worry. Last half term was so short that any time off would make a huge difference to attendance figures.

Thats what I thought- I felt awful yesterday because it looks so poor. They have only had theses 5 days off so I am assuming that they have taken it from beg Jan term.

They will not be having any more days off in term time so this future will bump itself back up by the end of the academic year.

Ultimately, the figures looked at by OFSTED will be for the year, but, to prevent it getting too low, then mst schools (and sometimes EWOs from the LA) look at figures each month or half term, to put some action plan into place with those families who have a low % attendance at any one time.

All schools if they are paying attention to attendance ( and they should be) will be looking at those figures on at least a termly basis. I know quite a few schools where the school and the EWO will be meeting monthly to review those children with poor attendance and persistent lateness and then targeting them to increase attendance. Plenty of schools now have some kind of alert system to parents if pupils are not in school by 0930.
If you have not had more than 5 days off and that is equal to 24% absence (76% attendance) then that says 21 days of schooling, which is not a termly figure but a monthly figure. Wait to you get the figures but i would not be too concerned providing that you are not regularly going away on holiday which will raise issues with the school.