Attendance and Absence

Good attendance is very important for every child’s learning, wellbeing, and success at school. When children attend school regularly, they build strong routines, develop confidence, responsibility and make the most of learning opportunities with their teachers and friends. These habits start in primary school and have a lasting impact well beyond the classroom.

Being in school every day helps children keep up with lessons (as these build carefully from day to day), practise key skills, and feel part of the school community. Even missing a small amount of time can make learning harder, as lessons build day by day. These days can not be made up even with catch-up support

Parents and carers have a legal and moral responsibility to ensure their child attends school regularly and on time.

Good attendance of 95% and more is essential for your children to make good progress in school.

 

Illness

 If your child is unwell and is unable to come to school, you must contact the school office or send a Weduc message on the first day of absence explaining the reason for your child’s absence. Slight coughs and colds are necessarily reasons for your child to remain off school as they do need to build up resilience and immunity. Sickness and other conditions such as chickenpox would require your child to be off school.  

Like all schools, we request that appointments for the doctor or dentist are made out of school hours, unless it is completely unavoidable.  We will request to see records of appointments taken during school times.

If your child becomes unwell during the school day and needs to go home, we will always contact you.

Please ensure that you keep your contact details up to date including those who are emergency contacts.

 

Unauthorised absence

Absences that are not approved by the school are recorded as unauthorised. This includes term-time holidays and absences where no valid reason is provided.  These are reported to The London Borough of Redbridge where they may issue a fine.

Unauthorised absence can have a serious impact on a child’s learning and we are committed to working with our families to ensure this does not happen

Lateness

Being late also has a negative impact on attendance and learning. Children who arrive late miss important parts of the school day, including vital teaching and opportunities to settle into learning- this not only impacts the child being late, but the other children as well.

Woodlands monitors lateness closely and will engage with parents/carers where this becomes as issue to ensure we can support the family in building good habits.

Persistent lateness is recorded and may be treated as unauthorised absence if it occurs after the close of registration. If this is the case, the Educational Welfare Officer will arrange a meeting with the family.

 

Educational Welfare Service

At Woodlands we have an Educational Welfare Officer who comes to school every week to check the registers and discuss attendance with our attendance officer.

If any child is frequently late, has a number of unauthorised absences, the educational welfare officer may arrange a meeting to discuss this with the family.

 

Holidays in school time

Woodlands Primary School has adopted the policy of the London Borough of Redbridge and operates a zero tolerance to term time holidays.  It is not acceptable to take children out of school for birthdays, family holidays, to visit relatives abroad, family weddings or any other special events during term time and these absences will not be authorised.  Fines will be imposed for unauthorised absence.

 

We expect all families to prioritise attendance and punctuality and to work in partnership with the school to ensure pupils attend regularly and on time. Good attendance and punctuality are essential if children are to achieve their full potential. By prioritising attendance, you are giving your child the very best possible start to their education – because every day counts.

Woodlands needs to meet the target of 96.0% which is the national average. We can only do this if parents support us fully and if we all understand the importance of NOT taking term time holidays or absences from school.

Thank you to those parents who are helping Woodlands raise our attendance levels, which helps our children to get the most out of their educational experience