Attendance

Attendance at Roding Valley

Good attendance and punctuality underpins academic achievement and wellbeing. Students with excellent attendance are far more likely to succeed beyond school and be adults who live happy, healthy lives. In this guide we would like to explain our processes around attendance in addition to the support we can provide.

What excellent attendance looks like

Excellent attendance is about being in school every day, even when you don’t feel 100%. Obviously, we understand that sometimes pupils will be too unwell to come to school, but about 10% of our pupils manage to come to school every day of the school year.

At Roding Valley, we consider excellent attendance to be over 97%.

The NHS has a very useful guide to support parents to decide when their child is too ill for school. Please refer to this if you are unsure:

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/is-my-child-too-ill-for-school/

Attendance percentages

Attendance percentages can be a bit misleading. If you score 95% in an exam, you would rightly feel very proud of yourself. In contrast, 95% attendance to school is not necessarily something to celebrate. Here’s why:

There are 190 days in a school year.

5% absence =

●      9.5 days

●      57 lessons

●      57 hours of learning missed

●      3420 minutes of lesson time

Recent research by the Department for Education shows just how closely attendance and attainment are linked.:

“Missing just 10 days of Year 11 reduces the likelihood of achieving a Grade 5 at GCSE by approximately 50%.”

So, if a pupil has attendance under 95% they are half as likely to achieve good grades at GCSE.

Persistent Absence

Pupils who attend less than 90% of the time are considered to be Persistently Absent. These pupils miss more than 19 days in a school year, which is well over 100 hours of learning. When added to weekends and school holidays, persistently absent pupils spend more days in a school year at home than they do in school.

Missing school has a huge impact on how well a pupil gets on at school. The more school a child misses, the harder it is for them to get into a routine of attending regularly and catch up on the work they have missed.

Research shows that a year 11 pupil who has missed 17 days during the school year will achieve one grade below what they would have achieved had they attended regularly. Research also shows that persistently absent children are less likely to do well at school, are more likely to experience crime, either as a victim or perpetrator, struggle financially, and even suffer with poor health in later life.

A few days of absence now could have a huge impact on a child's future opportunities.

As a parent or carer, you have an important role in making school attendance a priority. Only keep your child off school when they are genuinely too ill to attend. Book medical and dental appointments outside of school time whenever possible. Please talk to someone at school if you're having difficulties with your child’s attendance.

However, it’s important to recognise that children with long-term medical conditions, serious mental health challenges, or special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) may encounter additional obstacles. For those experiencing complex barriers to attendance, schools should engage in compassionate discussions with both children and their families, collaborating to provide tailored support that meets their specific needs.

What will the school do?

We will work with families to ensure that your child has the best attendance possible. We aim to do this by:

●      Maintaining excellent communication with families

●      Rewarding excellent and improving attendance

●      Finding out the barriers to excellent school attendance

●      Working with pupils and families to remove the barriers to excellent attendance

What can pupils do?

This is very simple. Pupils must make every effort to attend school each day, and to be on time for school and all of their lessons. If pupils feel that it is hard to attend each day, then they must speak to someone at home or at school so that we can help.

Pupils must ensure that they attend all lessons on time. There are five minutes of transition time allowed between lessons. This is more than enough time for pupils to move between lessons.