Attendance
The school invests much staff time and energy in monitoring absence/attendance and it is important that parents/carers continue to support our efforts by ensuring that their daughters attend school regularly.
We try to encourage good attendance because this promotes good achievement. We hope that you will work with us to ensure your daughter is able to gain as much as possible from her time here. We expect all girls with their parents’/carers’ support, to aim for 100% attendance.
Our policy on attendance states clearly what we expect and what actions we take when pupils are absent from school.
Briefly, these are:
- Pupils must be at registration at 8.35 am. All teachers also take a class register at the start of each lesson so that absentees are also noted then.
- Once registers have been taken, any pupil arriving subsequently will be marked late.
- If a pupil arrives after 9.15 am she will be marked as absent.
- Where possible, medical and dental appointments should be made out of school hours.
- If your daughter is unable to come to school, we ask that you text or telephone us before 9.15 am on each day of absence. Unless we have a message from you giving an acceptable explanation for the absence, this will be marked as ‘unauthorised’.
- Holidays should not be taken during school time; parents/carers do not have a right to take their daughters out of school for this purpose and if they do so, the absences will normally be recorded as ‘unauthorised’ unless there are exceptional circumstances. These need to be approved by the Headteacher following a written request made in good time (usually 6 weeks).
Our current procedures for following up absences are:
- If a pupil is absent and we have not received a text or phone call by 10.00 am, the school office will automatically send an InTouch message asking for an explanation.
- If a pupil is persistently absent, the Head of Year will contact parents and invite them to attend a meeting at school.
- If the schools’ efforts to improve a pupils’ attendance, or punctuality, have been unsuccessful, the case will be referred to the Local Authority’s Attendance Improvement Officer and she will follow this up.
Recognition of Attendance
- Heads of Year will issue certificates to those pupils whose attendance has been 98% or above for the term. There are two types of certificates: ‘Outstanding’ for those pupils whose attendance has been 100% and ‘Excellent’ for those pupils whose attendance has been 98% to 99.9%.
- These carry a positive behaviour points value of +3
- Improved attendance over a shorter period of time will also be recognised by awarding positive behaviour points
- There is a monthly draw for all girls who have achieved 100% attendance in the previous month; two girls from each year group receive Achievement Vouchers.
- All girls who achieve 100% attendance in any calendar month are awarded a +1 behaviour point by their Form Tutor or Head of Year.
For our attendance policy please visit our Policies page.
