School attendance dropped from 100% to 98% after early morning GP appointment, is this normal?

[monywilliams]

Just looking for some thoughts from other parents.

My son is in Y2 and had 100% attendance until last week, when he had a GP appointment first thing in the morning. I let the school know beforehand, he came in straight after, but because he missed the register, they’ve dropped his attendance from 100% to 98%, even though he was in for most of the day.

I asked the school about it, and they said that’s just how the system works. If a pupil misses the morning registration, even by a few minutes, it is recorded as an authorised absence for that session, which counts as half a day absent and affects the overall percentage.

What’s a bit frustrating is that last year I picked him up an hour before the end of the day for a GP appointment, and it didn’t affect his attendance at all. So leaving early is fine, but arriving late (even for a medical appointment) isn’t?

He never misses school or arrives late, so it feels a bit unfair to have that drop on his record. Has anyone else had this happen?

I think the PP had tongue firmly in cheek!

Oh I know, I was agreeing with PP! I don’t agree with 100% attendance certificates at all. It’s just for the sake of Ofsted and leads to children missing medical appointments or wanting to go to school when they’re ill. When I am Prime Minister they will be banned.

An excellent legislative choice, you have my vote!

Thank you!

DCs school records absences as justified and unjustified which I think is fairer.

If I mail to say one of them is going to the doctors or is ill or whatever its justified, if they're late or something it's unjustified and we'll get asked why.

I think they get something like 8 half days a term before attendance becomes an issue.

If they're present when the register is taken morning and after lunch, they get marked in, if they're not, they don't. That's how it works. That's how it has worked for a very very long time. Not something to get het up about or think you can negotiate over

In the nicest way possible, who cares? My attendance was 65% in my later school years and can confirm absolutely no employer has ever asked.

Perfect attendance awards are bull anyway, all it does is encourage people to send their kids who have been chucking up all night into school to spread it to everyone else, excludes troubled kids or those with health issues from even having a chance, and insinuates that little Tommy who wins it is better than the other kids because he was lucky enough to get the norovirus during half term instead.

If he wasn't there for morning registration he can't be marked as present. When he left early, he had been there for afternoon registration so it doesn't affect his attendance statistics but it would have been recorded that he had left the site. It's just standard practice. Why are you so bothered about it?

Early on in the term, a half day absence makes a bigger impact on attendance as there are fewer sessions that they should have been in for than later in the year. Schools actually prefer you to take the children in for registration and then to leave later for any medical appointment. Registers are electronic and school staff don’t have much leeway in how things are recorded. The school are judged on attendance more so than individual pupils.

I just think it is genuinely very warped to teach children that getting sick is something to feel bad about - as if you have "failed" in some way and can no longer get an award.

Some workplaces also work like this, life is just bollocks sometimes.

I don't think there should be attendance awards, and I speak as someone who had about 3 sick days through my entire school career.

Yes, it was 1.5 miles, and I had been accused of FII at a previous school due to DC's SEN. So I covered my back.

👏

It is as many people said just standard.

It's one of the (many) reasons 100% attendance awards (thinking in particular where the award is something big) are ridiculous nonsense.

Oh well that's more understandable. I thought it was just to have a gleaming record for the boast value!

They really do need to bring back the 😂 emoji! 😂

Yes there are two registration points a morning and afternoon.

if you miss them you are absent for the remainder of that session.

98% makes sense as for example DS school has had 60 sessions 59/60 is 0.983

one of DS friends always has appts between the sessions or at the end of the day

it is also all computerised so you can retrospectively add like you would when it was a paper one!

It's not about the education it's the percentages that matter because it's the percentages that they monitor.

You could:

1. get a very early appointment that gets you into school 5 minutes after registration so you've still got the whole morning's learning and causes minimal disruption or
2. go in for registration, come straight out and go to an appointment then faff around town all morning, go for McD's lunch and arrive back for afternoon registration, having missed the whole morning's lessons.

Case 1) will get you an absence mark and drop your attendance percentage, case 2) won't.

It's not the schools' fault it's the target setters.

The morning and afternoon registration is what is legally recorded. So if you miss one of those you will get an authorised absence.

I have leant to play the system as my son has to have 4 monthly appts to review his medication. I can often book it for school holidays as they tend to happen in December, April and August but if it’s not in school holidays then I alway book his appt for 11am as we can pick him up at 10.30 and return him before 12 so he doesn’t miss any registrations. He’s autistic and hates not having 100% attendance.

Oh no, DD2 is 18 now and I'm grateful that she's managing 2 hours per day and building to 3.

Super annoying I know. So last time I booked the GP appointment at 10am. He missed about two hours of school but it didn’t impact the percentage cause he was in the morning & afternoon register. Very stupid system

That’s quite an assumption. My child had 💯 last year, but that was because they didn’t get sick at all!

Also, they only got a handshake from the headteacher. Hardly a trophy 🤣

Lol. Exactly this

I had an issue with attendance last year and basically they are legally bound to record attendance in a very exact way so that it's comparable across all schools. Even down to the point that if your child is still weak from recovery from a hospital stay, if you don't send them in at all it's authorised absence, but if you send them in for the morning and pick them up before lunch, you get half a day unauthorised absence! So next time the papers are on about truanting levels being high I'll take it with a pinch of salt.
Having spoken to the senco, absence figures are more of an issue for the school than the parents, especially in that kind of situation

Its pretty standard so I wouldn't worry about it. Being there for morning and afternoon registration is all that counts really so it seems.
We get an authorised and unauthorised % - school only worry about the unauthorised % if it gets too high

My kids are sat at 82.2% 🤣🤣🤣 we had a lovely week in Lanzarote though. Attendance is not the be all end all. And yes it’s normal to drop for a GP appointment.