Attendance
Introduction
At Atlas Primary School, we are working hard to improve our attendance. We want our attendance to be above 96% for the whole school year.
We believe that every child should have the best education possible and we can only provide this, if your child is coming to school every day. This is because we offer a wide range of learning opportunities that we want children to be involved in on a daily basis.
You, as parents and carers, are particularly important in helping us achieve this, by bringing your children to school on time every day.
Attendance Expectations
Each term, we discuss children’s attendance with them at their learning journey meetings. We expect all children to have ‘Good’ or better attendance. We assess their attendance using the following criteria:
| 89% or below
Inadequate |
90%-95.9%
Requires Improvement |
96%-97.9%
Good |
98%-100%
Outstanding |
Rewards and Incentives
We offer many different rewards and incentives to children to improve their attendance.
Weekly Attendance Class Rewards
We reward the class with the highest attendance each week. The class with the best attendance gets to keep the attendance trophy for the following week.
Termly Attendance Rewards
Each child who achieves 100% attendance for the term will receive a special certificate congratulating them on their outstanding attendance.
Yearly Attendance Individual Rewards
At the end of the school year, any child with 100% attendance will receive an extra special certificate.
Reporting Absences
If your child is ill and unable to attend school, it is important that you ring our office to let us know as soon as possible and no later than 8:00am on the morning of illness.
You should contact the school every day that your child is to be absent, giving us a reasonable explanation for the absence and an estimated date and time of return.
Mr. Brearley in the office is the school’s attendance lead. He is always available to discuss your child’s attendance, as are our school’s senior leadership team. You can also speak to your child’s class teacher if you need support improving your child’s attendance or if you are having trouble picking them up, or dropping them off, on time.
Home Visits
The school has a legal responsibility to account for every child. Therefore, if you have not let us know that your child is absent and we are unable to contact you, or if we have not seen your child for a period equal to 3 days or more, our staff will conduct a home visit to check on the welfare of your child. If we’ve carried out 2 home visits and not seen your child, we will ask West Yorkshire police to carry out a welfare check.
Reasonable Absences
Many children lose days of learning through coughs, colds and temperatures (we advise buying a themometer to check temperatures as children often feel warm, but their temperature is not high). These are not considered reasonable absences by the school. The school is able to administer paracetamol to any children who have minor ailments such as these.
If you are not sure whether your child should be in school or not on account of illness, then please speak to a member of the office team.
Term Time Holidays
If you are planning a holiday, the school’s policy states that you must meet with Mrs. Simpson to discuss your leave of absence request.
All holidays will be unauthorised unless there is exceptional circumstances – this will be discussed in the meeting with Mrs Simpson. When a holiday is unauthorised and over 5 days, a penalty notice of £90 per parent/carer, per child will be issued by Bradford Council. If a holiday exceeds over 20 days, legal action might be taken by Bradford Council
Exceptional Circumstances
The school does not allow days off from school, other than in exceptional circumstances. Examples of exceptional circumstances are as follows:
- If a parent/carer is service personnel
- On the advice of a health professional
- Out of school, educational programmes (music, arts, sports, etc.)
- Religious observance
- Attending a wedding or funeral of a close relative
The Headteacher is unable to authorise term time leave of 5 days or more and any leave of absence equalling or exceeding 5 days will result in a fine from the local authority.
Punctuality and Lateness
As you may be aware, the school has recently implemented systems to improve the number of children signing in late in the morning. This has already had a considerable impact on reducing the number of children arriving in school later than 8:45am.
If your child is late for school, they will be expected to sign in at the main office, and then enter school through the Year 1/2 cloakroom. If you child arrives after 9:15am, this is after the register closes and this will go down as an unauthorised late mark and will affect your child’s overall attendance percentage.
In the afternoon, we ask that all parents/carers are waiting outside your child’s classroom for 3:15pm. If, on a particular day, you are running late to pick up your child, it is important that you let the school know as soon as possible.
If you arrive after 3:30pm you will be fined £5 per every 15 minutes late, per child. This will need paying on ParentPay by the end of that week.
Breakfast and After-School Clubs
If you are having trouble dropping your child off on time in the morning, the school runs a morning breakfast club. The cost of each session is £1.00 (50p for children who qualify for benefit related free school meals (FSM)) and you can drop your child off any time between 7:45am & 8:15am.
7:45am – 8:15am – Food is served
8:15am – 8:30am – Activities
We also run a series of after-school clubs most days of the week. Please speak to the office staff if you would like more information about these.
Improving Poor Attendance
If your child’s attendance drops below 96%, or there are other emerging attendance concerns, you may be asked to meet with your child’s class teacher and a member of the senior leadership team to discuss how the school can further support you in improving your child’s attendance.
These meetings have helped improve attendance for many children this year.
If your child’s attendance is a particular concern for the school, we may choose to monitor it more closely for a period of four weeks. During this time, it is expected that your child’s attendance is no less than 100%.
Should your child’s attendance continue to drop, or fall below 90%, we have a duty as a school to seek the advice and support of external agencies, such as children’s social care.
A Few Facts…
| No. of days missed | Attendance
Percentage |
No. of days missed | Attendance Percentage |
| 0 | 100% | 12 | 94% |
| 2 | 99% | 14 | 93% |
| 4 | 98% | 16 | 92% |
| 6 | 97% | 17 | 91% |
| 8 | 96% | 19 | 90% |
| 10 | 95% | 21 | 89% |
| If you miss… | That equals… | Which is… | Over 13 years of schooling, that’s… |
| 1 day per fortnight | 20 days per year | 4 weeks per year | Nearly 1.5 years |
| 1 day per week | 40 days per year | 8 weeks per year | Over 2.5 years |
| 2 days per week | 80 days per year | 16 weeks per year | Over 5 years |
| 3 days per week | 120 days per year | 24 weeks per year | Nearly 8 years |
Being late also adds up…
- Arriving 5 minutes late every day adds up to over 3 days lost each year.
- Arriving 15 minutes late every day is the same as being absent for 2 weeks a year.
- Arriving 30 minutes late every day is the same as being absent for 19 days a year.
In truth, your child will not have access to the education they deserve if their attendance is not ‘Good’ or better.
Please click the button below to view our handy Attendance Guide:
