D for Punctuality

[Olena3]

Hello,

My daughter’s school marks students for punctuality as part of the official yearly report. I have a few questions. The marking is completely subjective and arbitrary. There is no set grading policy. It is also not consistent throughout the year groups or the school. I have a son at school as well. Just what the teacher “feels”. Different teachers will give different grades.

Q: How many lates deserve the lowest grade possible? My daughter’s attendance was 95.81% but she got a D for punctuality because she was late 11 times last year. The school says an attendance of 96% “is celebrated and encouraged”.

Q: Should there be a transparent clear grading policy or is punctuality marking usually left to the teacher’s discretion?

Q: Just so I gain prospective, how many time are you guys late per year? Is a D really warranted in my case?

Q: Do all schools have a punctuality mark on the yearly report or does it differ from one school to another

Why is she late? I think 11 times is bad.

I think my wee one has been late twice in 6 years. Both would have been my fault.

5.79% lateness is terrible IMO, I can't recall my child ever being late for school.

I'm a teacher. 11 lates is a lot. It's as bad as I've seen tbh. If she was an adult in a job, she'd be in trouble. I wouldn't worry about the grade though. It won't be held against her and definitely won't haunt her in life.

It's not subjective or arbitrary, when you mark the electronic register you have to say how many mins late.

It's interesting to me that this is amongst the worst you have seen. I wonder if it's area dependent. I do agree 11 lates is a lot. However I'm aware of kids at my DCs school who are late several times a month. I'm aware either because DC tells me or because I see them when I am walking back from school. I have seen 1 mum and her DC late at least 4 times since Jan, and I don't do the school run every day.

Being late & being absent are 2 different things aren't they?

Not a big fan of schools coming down on being absent, when children have had genuine illnesses.

Being late though is a different matter, and being late 11 times is quite a lot and can see why the school have made a point of it.

We were late once last year. My own fault- i hadn't set the alarm properly and when I woke up naturally it was the time they should have been at school. My son was pretty mad at me about it, I apologised. I think its hard on kids to be late so I do try and fight my natural tendencies to cut everything a bit fine. Relying on public transport to get somewhere can be difficult though as its much less predictable than walking in.

How many times were my kids late? Primary - never. Secondary - when the school bus was late. That's it. 11 times is loads, you need to sort this out!

Dd is in yr 7 and has never been late to school, so I would say 11 times in a year is excessive.