School attendance and private company handling attendance

[AfroPunk]

We received a letter on Thursday detailing that the school are now working in partnership with a Ltd company to deal with atrendance. The new threshold is now 95% (other was 90%). Our 4yo dd has has 94% attendance so far and we received a letter over the weekend. As an aside, she has 4 unauthorised absences, which is fucking news to me (sorry about my language. I'm fuming).

So what's the deal with a private company handling absences? And what the fuck is going on when a child can no longer take the time off they need to recover from bugs? I'm fucking livid! I am disheartened, feel that this is an Ofsted appeasing load of shite.

user, like me, you must attend annual safeguarding refreshers, be briefed on statutory safeguarding duties etc? Safeguarding is a statutory part of every teacher's role - and presence in school (and the state a child is in while they are present in school) is part of safeguarding.

I can understand that a subject teacher in secondary is slightly further from the coalface of this than a primary teacher with a constant class all day and every day - and that is why secondaries will have specific pastoral roles and responsibilities within the school, because the possibility of a child slipping through the net between all those subject teachers is higher.

So I could understand user saying that she / he felt she / he had no particularly strong role in understanding and tracking absence of his / her pupils, especially if they teach the type of subject where you may only see each child a few times in each timetable cycle. However, i would be genuinely appalled if no-one in the school cared, or cared only because of Ofsted.

I do also think that, at the margins, there IS some unhelpful behaviour around attendance that does look at the statistics rather than the child. I would cite in particular appointments being made specifically to avoid registration times, whereas in primary, an appointment that misses afternoon registration but has the child in school all morning is DEFINITELY better than one that takes a child out of school after morning registration and has them back for afternoon registration.

However, IME a school that has a robust but caring attitude towards attendance, that can truly back up whatever it does by reference to knowledge of that specific child and their circumstances , is in a strong position when it comes to accountability to governors, Ofsted etc and has much more leeway when it comes to common sense solutions of this type.

"If a child isn't at school they aren't learning."
What a crock of shit that statement is!

Crusoe,

I would absolutely agree - as an ex home educator, apart from anything else - that a child can be learning when they are not in school.

However, equally, a child can be coming to harm when they are not in school, or their absence from school could be linked to something that is causing, or may cause, them harm.

The important think is knowing and understanding a child's whole pattern of absence and other circumstances that could be relevant, to keep them safe and to ensure that they benefit as fully as possible from their school years (taking that in the widest sense).

we re there to offer students an education, thats our job, not to namby pamby them and their parents. So many people try and enforce some sort of social service ethic onto us, that is not our job, we are not there for that, we are not trained for it or paid for it.

Teachers have clear safeguarding duties which come within the duties in their job descriptions for which they are both trained and paid. It's seriously concerning that any teacher has this understanding of what her duties entail.

Spoke to the head who said the two days leave request was actually denied. She said a letter had been sent in the post. We did not receive a letter. Nothing else was ever said regarding the matter. Clearly, there has been an error at the school's end. We have insisted upon an email which states this error is from school and not us, as the head has said he now can't redact the unauthorised absences.

Is that true?

The head also said that he can only grant leave in certain circumstances. Why is the birth if a sibling not considered extenuating circumstances? I thought these decisions were made by the head at their discretion?

Head thought we were being very confrontational. We said that the letter was confrontational, in that it threatened action from welfare officers. He said they could do that, doesn't mean that it will happen ... we said that is what a threat is!

Will await the email we've requested. In my reply, I will request the school's complaints policy and follow the appropriate channels there. I will have to complain because both children (and the head was reminded that dd2 is not yet of statutory school age) will have unauthorised absences marks against them that are there because of a mistake schools end.

Why didn't you simply point out that as your child is not yet of statutory age the concept of unauthorised absence does not apply - as several people on this thread have told you.

Why on earth go in all guns blazing? You will have children at this school for many more years. Rude antagonism will get you nowhere.

To be fair, I can see why the birth of a sibling wouldn't be considered an extenuating circumstance, particularly a planned CS. It's not as if you would want the older child to be present, and it wouldn't harm him to wait till after school to see his brother or sister.

But titchy, I also have a 7yo at the same school who this does affect. Being nice gets me nowhere neither - no better thought of, no better treated.

I'm sorry, but I'm sticking to my guns here. Something has clearly gone wrong at school's end and I'm not taking the blame.

Okay that's fine, but the point is we were given reason to think the leave request had been granted and are now told it's 4 unauthorised absences.

Afro,

i think the point is whether you would have acted any differently knowing that the absence was unauthorised?

4 sessions of unauthorised absence, within an otherwise exemplary attendance record and for a clearly defined and documented reason, will lead to no consequences. There will be no fine, and in the context of an entire school year their absence is minimal. Authorised absence is extremely rare now, so tbh a couple of sessions of unauthorised absence is not remotely rare.

I appreciate that if you only took the leave because you believed it to be authorised - in other words that had you known it would not, both children would have been at school - then this is annoying.

I also can't see that the birth of a sibling is extenuating circumstances. Especially not something as predictable as a planned cs.
The way I look at attendance is that school is a choice, if you choose to use it you're choosing to follow their rules on attendance.

I've also realised, reading back, that at least one of your children has relatively low attendance anyway - 6% absence at this point in the year isn't brilliant, though I realise that this will be a healthier 3% should they have no further absence this year. What were the other absences?

And, just to be clear, authorised and unauthorised absence both count for % attendance, so getting those 4 sessions marked as authorised will make no difference to e.g. the company or school starting the very early processes of talking to you about attendance.

There are a couple of things that DON'T count as absence - music exams, performances in a professional theatre under a license, residential visits - but in general, any absence counts against the % whether authorised or not.

This really annoys me OP. I am a teacher and also have kids who have been ill and undoubtedly have under the 95% attendance. School always encourage me to keep children off when they have been ill even when I may have been tempted to send them back as they have seemed to be well enough again. It is complete crap and arbitrary targets like this and attendance prizes etc are missing the key point which is that kids get viruses and will get sick. Many childhood diseases are infectious and require several days to get better. I need to be at work and have very limited childcare so am the last person to keep kids at home for no reason. Yes, some kids stay off for other reasons and should be in school, but I honestly believe that most of the time kids stay home as they are unwell. Schools do not want to take care of sick children. They infect others and also cause teachers to be ill and take time off too. Involving private companies is a ridiculous waste of money and is not what a good caring school should be doing. The school need to have a good pastoral system that can pick up whether kids are too frequently off and where they can see patterns that could indicate an issue. The fact that schools are having to tell parents to ignore computer generated letters shows that the systems they are using are rubbish.

Uh oh. It's always bad news when a private company takes over anything,be cause all they are concerned about is making money,usually in the form of fines and bonuses. Must say I have never before heard of a private company dealing with school attendance.

Afro, if the school says they sent you a letter but you didn't receive it, I'm not sure what else you can do? I guess there is no proof either way to whether they sent the letter or not.

However, IME a school that has a robust but caring attitude towards attendance, that can truly back up whatever it does by reference to knowledge of that specific child and their circumstances , is in a strong position when it comes to accountability to governors, Ofsted etc and has much more leeway when it comes to common sense solutions of this type.
I agree. I know my cases inside out and can easily detail to inspectors, but if we're still below national average, it's not looking good. We still have to show weee making every effort to improve it - and actually there generally isn't a huge amount to know in most the 94-100% cases.

I don't know now if posting is going to be helpful because I sense digression in our opinions which I know from MN experience will lead to bickering. I'm feeling prickly as it was stressful earlier and I've had a horrible weekend with worry. This will be my last post for today.

Fwiw, I think the birth of a sibling is reason enough to request leave. I think these are family matters that a school should support. I don't ask for much; I don't think this was asking too much. I am disappointed we were not supported but accept the head is under pressure. Had I known the leave wouldn't be accepted, I definitely would not have taken them out for 2 days. I might have considered one day (following the birth), but knowing how I worry, probably wouldn't have done it.

In my opinion, 94% attendance is really good, especially over winter when my children have had winter viruses. I can't get my head around it being bad. My children are only ever off for illness: I'm not talking a runny nose or cough. I mean when they present with symptoms and temperature, or if they're sick, diahorrhea, those things. The school has a 48hr policy that a child must be kept off for that duration following the last bout of sickness or diahorrhea.

Also, to the poster who said something like a ELCS being simple - please don't make assumptions like that. I had a difficult pg, I'd was in and out of hospital in the weeks leading to the birth. Despite being an elective, I went into labour and needed an EMCS.

*predictable, not simple (on tablet and couldn't scroll up).

94% isn't great tbh - I know 90 anything percent sounds great in exams and things, but just a few more percent and it's the same as having every Friday afternoon off. Maybe thinking about it like that would help?

Re your older child - your OP was about the four year old...

Some children get more often sick that others and take longer to recover. Even in my work place some people just get more sick than others. It does not mean they are skiving.

Capriana,

Absolutely. However, there is the additional complication - both for children and adults - that the threshold for 'taking the day off sick' can be very different, anywhere from 'a little tired;' to 'at death's door'!

Slightly off subject of most other PPs but as mega said yes it would be good to get an FOI to see how much of the schools budget is being spent on this private company (that some of the teachers might have preferred to be spent on resources or, oh I dunno, another teacher maybe). Also the Governors meeting minutes should be published on the school website so you can see when it was discussed/agreed. Is your school an Academy? Does one of the Trustees happen to run a company that provides this kind of attendance monitoring service I wonder......

all they are concerned about is making money,usually in the form of fines and bonuses

The company may get a bonus for achieving attendance targets but it cannot make money from fines. The LA sets the policy on attendance fines. Penalty notices can only be issued in line with that policy. The revenue from fines goes to the LA, not the company.

Confirm that the only way that this company can make money is by offering services to the school, not from any fines that are levied, even if they are in some way connected to the issuing of fines. That is definitely paid to the LA.

It is an interesting question as to how much the school is prepared to pay for this service. If you take any average 2 form entry primary school with 420 pupils then if their current attendance is say 93% (which is very low) then they are talking an average 30 pupils being absent a day or being more realistic needing to get an extra 17 pupils in each day to achieve 97% attendance (which would be good) from current 93%.

Given that it is not easy to move attendance 1% when you are already up in the 90% range, I think this company would have to be putting in considerable effort to make the kind of difference the school might want. That is probably somebody full time on the job, which means to me £30K+ per annum as a fee.

I would not pay that for the gain and would simply target the 15 worst attenders with a member of staff phoning them up every time they were off, which could be done in less than 2 hours at day. Not saying I would get a 4% increase increase in attendance figure but I would get some way towards it.