Frustrating attendance letter

[lavenderlou]

Received a letter from the attendance officer at DD's school. She does have poor attendance this year but that's because she had open abdominal surgery in the first half term and the surgeon told us she couldn't return to school for two weeks. It was just before the half term so she missed 9 days in total, 3 of which she was in hospital. She had a catheter in for nearly a week! We spent the half term holiday catching up on missed work.

In addition she has had three days off when she had Covid and was really poorly. That's it.
We've now been told that any further absences will only be authorised with medical evidence. Well they can help me find a doctor who will do a doctor's note. Previous years her attendance has always been very good.

I'm a primary school teacher and know how annoying absence can be but am also aware that sometimes there are exceptional circumstances. It's so frustrating when children with genuine health issues are penalised.

Put it in the bin and don't think anymore about it. It is just a standard letter triggered when attendance drops below a set percentage. You had a very valid and legitimate reason for the absence and so I wouldn't worry about it further.

These letters are statutory requirements from the government and schools can do nothing about it.

I agree with the previous posters - and I understand how upsetting it must be to receive an attendance letter after what was presumably a traumatic experience. Definitely bin it! Hope your daughter is doing well now.

Bin and ignore as pps have said

Bin it is!

They're obliged to send the letters, but I do wish schools would take the initiative and add a paragraph at the start explaining that and saying that obviously in your case they know that the absence was unavoidable.

As for evidence for future absences, perhaps it's worth pointing out that you can easily provide medical evidence for 9 days of her absences, so there are actually only 3 days so far for which they're having to take your word for it.

We are always getting these letters about 10 year old ds4 who has had 22 operations and countless hospital appointments. This year for the first time there was a note with it saying they understand his absences were genuine but they have to send the letter out to everybody.

I'm interested to know if children's attendance has actually improved since the government started telling schools to send out these letters. From what I've seen, the people who go on term time holidays or just keep their children off for no reason will carry on doing it and the parents who keep their children off for medical reasons worry and get upset.