Would you query absence figures if the school hadn’t raised it?

[caravela]

We just got DD(10)’s end of year report - all fine, very positive. But they list her attendance as 96%.

This equates to about 7 days off school: there is no way this is correct. She had 1 day off this year for illness. There was one occasion on which I had to collect her at lunchtime for a medical appointment (so she would have missed afternoon register). Other than that, the only time she had missed any school was a) to attend a secondary open morning, which I picked her up for at 10am and dropped her back at 12 so she wouldn’t have missed a registration session, and b) for the residential trip organised by the school which surely cant count as an absence. So the figure of 96% must simply be an admin error.

School hasn’t contacted me ever about these statistics they apparently have on her attendance so I would just shrug and ignore, but now the government are getting increasingly high pressure about attendance, is this unwise? I really don’t want to cause any hassle for the school over nothing, but I also don’t want to start getting letters or threats of fines if she gets a vomiting bug in September because it pushes her under some threshold. WWYD? Should I politely query it or forget about it and hope they keep better records next year?

My son’s report also said 96% attendance but the school app shows his attendance as 98.63%. I don’t know if I’ll mention it though.

At my grandsons school lates count against attendance. So if they're late to registration they're marked as having missed, if she's been late a couple of times that would add up.

According to their policy document they award a late mark at 9am and close the register at 9:10am so award an absence mark at that time. She has never not been in school by 9. She has once or twice been 5 minutes late (ie 8:45 rather than 8:40) but that shouldn’t make a difference according to their policies.

Is there an app the school uses? If so you will most likely be able to see it there.

If there isn't an app (and not there is an app but you haven't signed up to it) the school should be able to provide you with a full attendance transcript to show what marks were given on what days so you can check. But make sure there isn't an app first as it's designed to reduce the admin burden of providing answers to general queries.

Our school has a register after lunch as well and any register missed counts as an absence. So 8 absences is actually 8 half days missed or 4 whole days. Is yours the same perhaps?

I queried my sons absence when I knew he was on 100% and two absent marks showed up. Turns out they'd marked the whole year out when they were on a school trip. They were grateful I'd mentioned it as they had to correct 80 odd kids records. I think the school is monitored on attendance levels so they might be grateful- cant hurt to mention it.

There is definitely no app.

Yes all schools monitor attendance by two half sessions. But attendance is a percentage of the total sessions so that makes no odds. You can either call it 7.6 days missed of 190 school days or 15.2 half day sessions missed of 380 - either way it’s 4% (which is not right).

I think the most likely scenario is that the teacher has put down a different child’s attendance stats under the time pressure of writing 31 reports in a short space of time. In that case it may be correct on some central record. It’s also possible that the office has marked the entire year group as absent for all the school trips and residentials this year- though that seems incompetent of them and they are not usually.

I would just ask the school. I don’t think it’s likely that she will have been marked absent for the trips/residential.

I queried by kids absence as they both hadn’t missed a day. I could prove they were in the days the school had marked them as missed so it was corrected

There is a specific code for if they’re on a residential so it won’t be that. Just ask. at our school we got a print out showing every code for the year so you can see exactly which days they were absent and why.

This just reminded me that when I worked in a prep, and we had to do our own attendance figures as teachers, we were told to count ANYTHING that wasn’t ’present’ as an absence - sports fixtures (and there were a lot of these!) residentials, school trips etc. the parents went mad! No one had a figure higher than about 80% SLT had to go back on what they’d said and recalculate and send out again.

I’ve raised it before. On my child’s report one year, it showed a day of unauthorised absence. I let the school know I disagreed with this on a feedback form and they contacted me very quickly about it. I forwarded the email to them I’d sent at the time of the absence (saying DC was unwell) and they changed it to authorised.

I work in attendance at a primary school. Just drop them an email and ask them to send you your child's attendance certificate which will contain all their marks for the year and then you can see for yourself and query anything that looks wrong.

You haven’t said if the 4% is authorised or not. I wouldn’t care if it’s authorised but would follow up if it’s unauthorised due to risk of fines.

They don’t break it down into authorised and unauthorised. In previous years they have, but this year they have simply put an overall attendance figure.

Update: I did contact the school after most people on here said they would. When they looked into it, it turned out there was an error in the software that pulled attendance figures into the reports, which counted school trips as absences (so all the Year 5 and 6 children who have week-long residentials as well as various other trips out of school were showing up as having quite low attendance).

But fortunately the error didn't affect the official attendance data that gets sent to the government, so fortunately it doesn't matter. And the school were lovely about me querying it. I'm glad I checked, though

That's a good outcome. We're in a similar situation, I don't think my DD had any days off with illness this year. But she's marked as 96 per cent attendance.

She did go on several secondary school open mornings but generally after morning registration. This thread is making me think I should query their numbers!