Attendance

At Bridstow, we believe that academic success is directly linked to good attendance. We fully understand that there are times when children feel unwell and are not able to attend school. Sometimes it can be tricky deciding whether or not to keep your child off school when they're unwell. The following link can help parents and carers make these decisions.

There are also government guidelines for schools and nurseries about managing specific infectious. These say when children should be kept off school and when they shouldn't. If your child is well enough to go to school but has an infection that could be passed on, such as a cold sore or head lice, let their teacher know.

Some examples are below:

Coughs and colds - It's fine to send your child to school with a minor cough or common cold. But if they have a fever, keep them off school until the fever goes. Encourage your child to throw away any used tissues and to wash their hands regularly.

High temperature - If your child has a high temperature, keep them off school until it goes away.

Chickenpox - If your child has chickenpox, keep them off school until all the spots have crusted over. This is usually about 5 days after the spots first appeared.

Hand, foot and mouth disease - If your child has hand, foot and mouth disease but seems well enough to go to school, there's no need to keep them off.

Often when we look at attendance, we look at percentages. However this doesn't always give us an accurate picture on what good or attendance that causes concern looks like. If you sat a test or exam and scored 80%, I have no doubt many of you would be really pleased. When it comes to attendance, anything below 95% begins to cause concern in the number of hours in lost learning.

The table below breaks down the percentages of attendance and how many days/hours are lost in just 1 academic year. Imagine if this was every academic year for a child.

The diagram below equally shows how the number of minutes late can affect the number of hours lost in learning. Simply being 5 minutes late every day of the academic year means 15 hours lost. Every minute in school is utilised, and this is from the very moment the children enter the school building.

Procedures for Reporting Absences

Notification Process

Parents must notify the school by 9am on the first day of absence (or before using the answer machine function on the school phone system), providing the reason for the absence.
Please inform the school every following day your child is absent until they return.
The school will contact parents on the first (and following) day of absence if no notification is received by 9am. This will initially by via email but will follow up with a phone call if no reply is received.

Follow-up Procedures

If an absence remains unexplained by midday of the first day of absence, the school will follow up with a home visit (when appropriate) to ascertain the reason for absence.
Persistent absences will be monitored, and appropriate support will be offered.

Authorised Absences

Authorised absences may include:

Illness
Medical appointments (wherever possible, appointments should be made outside school hours)
Exceptional circumstances as agreed by the school

Unauthorised Absences

Unauthorised absences may include:

Family holidays taken during term time
Absences without valid reasons