Attend today.

Achieve tomorrow. School Matters

December 2017

Attend today.

Achieve tomorrow. School Matters

Welcome to the 2nd attendance newsletter for this autumn term. In this newsletter Waterside will be giving you attendance figures for this term broken down by class. There is also a breakdown by class of the punctuality within school. Please see below;

The Local authority and the Department of Education set all schools the minimum expected target of 96% attendance over the school year. Waterside Primary is currently below this target and has been identified as a school needing to improve attendance.

Attendance is really important because your child cannot learn if they are not in school.

If your child had an attendance figure of 90% every year of their primary school life they would miss over a year of their schooling.

We need your help to raise whole school attendance.Below are the attendance figures for the last 3 years and as you can see it has slowly declined although

we did make a small improvement last year.

2014-2015 / 2015-2016 / 2016-2017
95% / 94.6% / 94.7%

This year from September 4th 2017 to Friday 15th December 2017 139 schools days were unauthorised (no reason was given for absence or pupils had unauthorised leave from school). 37 Pupils make up this figure.

This figure is in addition to the authorised 1080 sessions which equates to540 equivalent days that pupils have missed due to authorisedillness, medical appointments or agreed leave.155 pupilsaccount

for this figure.

As part of our Ofsted Inspection, Waterside needs to improve, therefore school is now monitoring attendance closely and offering initiatives and prizes to those who do come to school every day.

Please read the information below carefully so that you know how we will be monitoring attendance going forward.

Attendance Management in School from Sept 2017

Mrs Birchill our Admin Assistant will call or text parents in the morning to find out about unexplained absence. It is important that you call the office and let them know if your child is poorly.

A letter will be sent out for any unexplained absence. If no response is received within 2 weeks the absence will be marked as unauthorised (O Code).

The parents of any child falling below 95% attendance will be sent a letter of concern to make them aware that the child’s attendance is slipping and ask for their support in ensuring that it improves.

Any child’s whose attendance is below 90% will receive a letter of concern asking them to attend a meeting with the Head Teacher/Home School link to discuss the reasons for the low attendance and ways in which we can work together to ensure it improves quickly.

Pupils who have consistently low attendance will be referred to Hampshire County Council ‘Legal Intervention team’ for advice.

Parents who remove their children from school for extended periods during term time without notice or authorisation may face a Penalty Notice.

We know that there are many parents and children who work hard to ensure that their children do come to school and always let us know if their child is ill.

As an incentive and to reward good attendance Waterside will be giving out a certificate to the class with the highest attendance each half term.

In addition, each half term the school will run a

raffle. Weekly a report is runwhich details all the children who have been in school for 100% of the time. For example; if your child has been at school for all of this half term, their name will go into the raffle 8 times as this term is almost 8 weeks long, their name for each week of 100% attendance.

On the last assembly of each half term, a name will be drawn out of the box and the winner will receive

a prize.

Class with Highest Attendance / Winner of the Raffle Prize
Autumn Term 1 / Year One / Year 3 Pupil
Autumn Term 2 / Year Three
Spring Term 1
Spring Term 2
Summer Term 1
Summer Term 2

Lastly, thank you for your support in helping to raise school attendance. Children only have one chance in school and every second counts. If you would like any support or further clarification please come and speak to the office and we shall do our best to support you.