Appleton Academy is a community that works together to inspire, nurture and develop one another. A place where you can ‘be your best’.
Excellent attendance and punctuality is essential for every child if they are to be their best. We set an attendance target of 96% as the minimum that we expect for all children and young people.
Evidence shows that those children who attend school regularly make better progress academically and socially. To help a child achieve full attendance, parents and carers play a critical role in helping us promote good attitudes towards attendance. The impact of poor attendance is significant and contributes to life long disadvantage, including social and emotional challenges.
Pupils are expected to arrive on time, every day. As a community, it is important we ensure that children are present at every opportunity, arriving on time, not missing school unnecessarily and are not being taken out of the Academy without authorisation. Attendance is monitored closely, and we will follow up unexplained absences with parents or carers.
Formal monitoring of attendance takes place twelve times a year and where a pupil’s attendance record reaches a concerning level, we will contact parents or carers to discuss ways in which we can support all parties to help improve the attendance of the child or young person concerned.
Reporting Absence
If your child is unwell and unable to attend school, you must contact the attendance line on 01274 421053 or report their absence via the school office: 01274 600550 (option 1). You can also email: attendanceteam@appletonacademy.co.uk or text: 07860 095503
We ask parents to contact the school each day that their child will be absent.
Medical and Other Appointments
Routine medical and other appointments should be made outside of school time, unless it is an emergency or relates to a hospital appointment.
We understand that this is not always possible, and we therefore ask that, if your child has an appointment, you notify us in advance providing the evidence in the form of an appointment card, letter or text screenshot. Although non urgent appointments should be made in the school holidays, where appointments during school times are unavoidable, we ask that you arrange these close to the start or end of the school day to avoid lost learning.
If your child has an appointment, please inform us by telephone, email or a note provided in the child’s book bag or planner.
Pupils should attend school before the appointment and return to lessons afterwards.
Leave of Absence and Holidays in Term Time
It is a legal requirement for pupils registered on the roll of a school to attend every day that the school is open, except in a small number of allowable circumstances such as being too ill to attend or being given permission for an absence in advance from the school. Term time holidays are not an exceptional circumstance. This has been reinforced by the DFE: Working Together to Improve Attendance (August 24), which states that the DfE does not consider a need or desire for a holiday or other absence for the purpose of leisure and recreation to be an exceptional circumstance.
There is a common misconception that any child is allowed to take 10 days’ holiday per year. This is not true and the government strongly urges parents or carers to avoid taking a child out of school for family holidays as this will disrupt their education. Holidays during term time will not be authorised and will be recorded as unauthorised absence. A fixed penalty notice application will be made to the Local Authority for holiday absences after five days. If you take your child on holiday in term-time without the school’s consent, the fine is now £80.00 for each child. If you do not pay this within 21 days, it will be increased to £160.00. You will need to pay the increased fine within 28 days or court action can be taken against you.
Please note that absence will not be authorised for reasons such as shopping for uniform, birthdays, day trips, weekends away etc. Only exceptional circumstances warrant an authorised leave of absence.
Requests should be made well in advance and in writing by parents or carers using the form on the school website. https://tinyurl.com/mr38enrj
Requests made retrospectively will be unauthorised.
Requests for absence for reasons such as compassionate leave, special family events, sporting or musical competitions in which a student is a participant etc, should be made in the same way.
All requests are considered individually, taking into account the circumstances of the request. Other factors will be taken into account, such as:
We will notify parents of our decision in writing. Where a parental request has been refused, and parents still decide to take their child out of school, this absence will be recorded as unauthorised.
We reserve the right to apply to the Local Authority to issue a Fixed Penalty Notice under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003.
Please be aware that the decision to deny a request for a leave of absence or a holiday within term time is final and we do not accept appeals of this decision. Complaints about the decision making of the school or the issuing of a Fixed Penalty Notice will be considered to be vexatious and will not receive a response.
Same Day Contact and Attendance Monitoring
We take our safeguarding responsibility seriously and if we have received no contact from parents or carers explaining why your child is absent, we will call you each day to follow up on this.
Calls are made in these circumstances on a daily basis, even where a child has been absent due to illness on previous days. We cannot assume that a child is still ill if we have not been notified and we would not wish to put a child at risk by failing to contact their parents or carers.
If we are unable to make contact with parents or cares, or where there are ongoing concerns, the school will conduct a home visit to check on the child’s welfare.
Persistent Absence
Parents or carers have a legal duty to make sure their child attends school regularly. We can make a referral to the Local Authority where parents or carers are failing in this legal duty.
Persistent Absence is a serious problem for children, as much of the work children miss when they are off school is never made up, leaving them at a considerable disadvantage.
A child will be defined as a ‘Persistent Absentee’ if they miss 10% or more of school.
The local authority has the power to enforce school attendance where this becomes problematic, including the power to prosecute parents/carers who fail to ensure a child’s regular attendance at school. If found guilty, parents or carers could be fined up to £2500 and/or imprisoned for three months.
It is important for parents and carers to note that the government has also strengthened schools’ ability to respond to this issue by increasing the cost of Fixed Penalty Notices to £60.00 if paid within 21 days and £120.00 if paid between 21 and 28 days. These are an alternative to the prosecution of parents or carers for failing to ensure a child attends school regularly. Failure to pay can result in prosecution in the Magistrates’ Court.
Punctuality and Lateness
The school policy is to encourage punctuality but also actively discourage lateness, as it can seriously disrupt lessons. If a child is late and misses registration, a late mark will be recorded. School will be sympathetic if this lateness can be justified, however, if a pattern of lateness starts to emerge, parents/carers will be invited to discuss the matter in order to reach a satisfactory solution.
A late pupil is one who arrives after the start of the school day. It is the responsibility of the parent or carer to contact school and inform them of the lateness. Any pupil arriving after 9.30am will be marked late, unauthorised absence. For reasons of Health and Safety, all children arriving late will be required to enter school by the main door.
As well as punctuality at the beginning of the school day, we also expect punctuality at the end of the day from parents and carers when you are collecting primary children at 2.55pm. It is very distressing for a child to be left behind at the end of the school day and not collected on time. In addition to the emotional impact on the child it must be remembered that supervising children at the end of the day makes unnecessary demands on school resources, particularly if this is repeated day after day. Parents and carers who are repeatedly late to collect their child may be subject to child care charges and this policy has been set out in previous correspondence with parents.
