94.6% attendance and summoned to a meeting with head

[Pantone363]

DD broke her arm, novo virus and has been late 4 times this year (all before register is closed and we live 5 miles from the school so traffic/accidents/stuck behind a tractor!)

Meeting with the head, class teacher and EWO.

Overboard or not?

Second going to the meeting. This term has pulled us up to about 95% which I never expected to get to this year. We were on 84% at Christmas.

If you think this is overboard-try not going to the meeting, then you'll see what it's like to get blown out of all proportion! You will have the 'poor attender' and 'won't engage' labels added to your file making it far far worse for you.

It's a tricky one.
I do think you should go to the meeting, BUT I do engage with the school...I went in this morning to give them an update after I took da2 to the gp.
I always phone if he is absent, I give them plenty of notice of planned absences (like hospital appts) and have had at least 2 meetings about his health issues with his CT and HT.
They don't care about my son.
All they care about is ticking the boxes. Or to be being seen to tick the boxes.
But I do think that not going will just make things worse.
You have every right to feel aggrieved though.
Perhaps phone parent partnership and ask if one of their people can come with you and take notes for you?

Do you work OP? Occurred to me no way would I be taking time off work for this rubbish. If I was off anyway I'd be a lot more cooperative and vaguely amused by it all.

I got a phone call from DD1s secondary school saying that I was going to get a threatening letter from the school inviting me to a meeting but they were only sending it out to please the EWO and to just ignore it!

They have outsourced the EWO function. Holy crap.

I agree that the meeting is a waste of time. Teacher time as well as yours.

What better way to illustrate that than attend.

If you don't attend (at a time that is convenient to you) you won't hear the last of it, as the outsourced EWO can continue to justify their consultancy fee to hound you.

This is ridiculous. My dd's attendance fell to around 75% in Year 9, during a chronic illness that we thought might be ME. She's since brought it up to just under 90%. We've kept the school informed with copies of her consultants' letters and various diagnoses and the school has never bothered us about it in the slightest.

My understanding was that attendance under 85% triggered EWO involvement but I have not been a Head of Year for a long time so I maybe out of date. However, I would attend the meeting - you do not want the EWO on your back! Explain the absence(s), ask why EWO involved (surely the school know the mitigating circumstances here?) and ask what you need to do to ensure the situation does not re-occur. Can the school eliminate the 'known and accounted for' absences from any future calculations & triggers?

I'm seriously concerned that valuable teaching time is wasted on this sort of nonsense. Yes, there will be times when the head and class teacher need to meet parents to talk about attendance, but for their own sake surely they can do a filtering exercise and choose not to waste time meeting the likes of you.

It reminds me of the time I worked in an office where people had to time record and were supposed to clock up a certain percentage of chargeable time. They decided to set up formal meetings with everyone who wasn't meeting their targets, and the victims were required to turn up with a written action plan showing why they were failing and what they were going to do about it. One of my colleague's action plans read:

Reason for failure: knocked down by car which mounted a payment, sustained fractured arm, ribs and clavicle, hospitalised two weeks, convalesced two weeks, right arm still in plaster.

Action plan: try not to get knocked down by drunk driver again.

Needless to say, HR and indeed the numpty who summoned him to the meeting knew all about the accident from day one.

Why would any teaching time be wasted Icimoi?

Flippin' keen EWO.

This sort of meeting is not arranged or planned for by any teachers.

They have outsourced the EWO function. Holy crap.

EWOs are employed by the LEA not by the school ... teachers are not involved in the process. In my area the EWO makes an appointment to visit school and arrives armed with attendance data.

It is taking teacher time though isn't it if it's a meeting with the head and the class teacher?

I would ask them to make sure they have someone medically trained attend the meeting - as of course this is medical issue - point out you are happy for any medically trained doctor to attend but you would like to know there name and qualification before attending the meeting.

catkind teachers aren't normally involved in these meetings unless held outside normal teaching hours

We have 84 point something attendance and got the letter!
He's five and was off for scarlet fever!, then this week three whole days after vomiting through the night : no doctor visit for these.
I'm so angry, I'm going to write down how I feel and why.
Either they feel he's "too ill to go to their school" or we're evil parents keeping him off when he's perfectly healthy.
Grr.
What is the solution?
Scrap stupid % targets.

Do none of these "professionals" have a scrap of common sense? Most schools/EWOs only pursue "problem" families and do not have time for the odd illness and accept this as part of childhood. I would go to the meeting, armed with facts. I assume this is an Academy or a Free School if it is not using the LA's EWOs. I worked with EWOs for years and found them very sensible people. Also one child having an absence due to illness will hardly derail an Ofsted inspection outcome.

Well....ds2 has got to have a tonsilectomy and adenoidectomy :(
Hopefully they will accept that as a good reason for absence?

The letters are generated by a computer which is why you are invited in to talk to a person. In this day and age the powers that be don't take the word of teachers

The letter states it will be an opportunity to discuss existing barriers that may be effecting my child's attendance at school and strategies for improvement.

You have said that you have been late 4 times even though you only live 5 minutes from school. Once is understandable. After that you realise that there might be traffic or an accident or a tractor, so you allow more time for your journey.

However, if you don't and are late for a further 3 times, it makes sense for the school to arrange a meeting so that they can suggest this simple solution to you so I can understand why they word it like that.

NB Fairenuff, it's 5 miles, not five minutes. If it takes them five minutes to get to school from home, then they deserve to have the police in on the meeting, too, to advise them of road safety, particularly around schools. As for whether it's money well spent for an EWO to visit a school in order to suggest to a parent that they leave home earlier in order to avoid traffic accidents, traffic jams and tractors four times a year, I reserve judgment. I just hope all that speeding they are doing in order to get to school in 5 minutes isn't the cause of the accidents.

I live six miles from mine and I allow enough time for delays. Except for once when a road was completely closed for snow and I had to take a massive detour. But that day half the children didn't turn up at all so they made allowances.

I don't think anyone can be repeatedly late for work and blame it on the traffic. You need to factor it in and leave earlier. Some parents don't do this until the school points out the bleedin' obvious to them so that's why the standard letter is phrased like that.

Gosh. How offensive.

I want to say I wouldn't have attended either, that I would have countered with a solicitors letter about justified absence and the nature of the area, with frequency and extent of lateness, and that any further comments should be directed to my solicitor, who would crucify them with a smile, mentioning the words "reasonable" and "prejudicial" before making a full snarling complaint to the LEA against the company.

I know however that these people are ticky boxy, and that to resist being hauled in like an errant child and patronised for something beyond my control would make waves for everyone.

I am astonished they are spending money on this, to be frank. Ask them to save the cash on outsourcing and buy the school a helicopter instead if they care about tractors causing the odd bit of slight lateness so much.

If they can't get this right, imagine the mess they'd make of fining parents for homework non compliance.