Trust Parent/Carer Friendly Attendance Policy & Parent/Carer Guide
Parent/Carer Policy Summary
At all our Olympus Academy Trust schools, we are passionate about attendance because being in school every day really does matter!
You are our essential partners in promoting good attendance because you have the bottom-line responsibility for making sure your child gets to school every day. Just as parents focus on how their children are performing academically, you also have such an important role in setting expectations for good attendance and monitoring your child’s absences, so that missed days don’t add up to academic trouble.
Regular attendance is crucial for every learner to enjoy all the many benefits that school brings- it’s not just about learning together, it’s about making friends and feeling like you are part of a community. Missing just one day means there is a lot to catch-up on.
Department for Education Expectations
The Olympus Academy Trust prioritises the monitoring, support and robust action needed to secure high levels of attendance. This does include working with Local Authority where we have unauthorised absences on a learner’s record. The Department for Education expects Local Authorities to issue fines to parents with this type of absence.
This means that in South Gloucestershire a penalty notice may be issued where there have been 10 sessions of unauthorised absence within 10 school weeks absence.
This could relate to being late to school after the register has closed, going on a holiday during the term or having absences which have not been authorised.
Our Trust Attendance Principles
All our schools use our Trust Attendance Principles. Here is a quick overview for you so you can see how we will be working with you and your child:
Team Attendance
Attendance is everyone’s responsibility, and everyone has a role and understands their specific responsibilities, which will reduce absence and create a strong attendance culture.
- Parents: Foster a culture of punctuality and regular attendance, crucial for their child’s academic and personal development. Talk about how important it is to be in school
- School: Monitor attendance, communicate with parents, and implement interventions to support learner engagement.
- Learners: Attend school regularly and punctually, actively engaging in learning and trying your very best in everything you do
Strong Starts
We deliberately plan to make sure that learners don’t miss the crucial start of every term as this reduces the risk of further absence each term. This comes from national research. You may hear from us about this this if your child has previously missed the start of the school year or term.
Understanding causes for absence and early intervention
We work hard to understand why children and young people are not in school so that we can provide support to them. We will discuss anything we learn with you as parents and carers.
We implement a phased and tiered approach to attendance support and intervention.
Our attendance phases are based on the attendance percentage a learner has and once it dips below 95%, we start to monitor this on our first phase. Our aim is to intervene early when we notice patterns of absence.
Intentionally inclusive within our attendance culture
We feel passionate about building a culture that creates belonging in our school. Supporting more vulnerable learners to experience success academically and socially really matters to us and so we pay particular attention to these learners when we are looking at attendance data. Their experience in school is important to us.
Working in partnership
We want to work with our families and other agencies to provide the support needed to improve attendance when needed. Don’t hesitate to get in contact with us if you need help with anything affecting attendance at our school.
Data driven and decision making and response
Through regular data analysis, we ask questions to identify concerns early, leading to timely and supportive intervention. We will get in touch with you to discuss any patterns we are seeing with missing days of school
Other Information
Our Attendance Policy is closely linked to other key policies such as Behaviour, Teaching and Learning, Safeguarding, Mental Health, SEND, and Pupil Premium.
Our school prioritises learner welfare. Concerns regarding attendance are promptly investigated, and unexplained or prolonged absences trigger safeguarding procedures, including home visits and communication with agencies.
School Times:
Please see individual school details.
Requesting Absence:
- Requests for absence for holidays will not be authorised.
- Non-urgent medical and dental appointments should be made outside of school hours to limit impact on learning
- Our attendance policy on our website has a list of what we call exceptional circumstances where we may agree absence during term time
Reporting Absence:
- Please see individual school details.
Definitions:
- Persistent Absence (PA): Attendance at or below 90%, equating to 19 or more missed school days per year.
- Risk of Persistent Absence: Attendance consistently below 95%, translating to between 10 to 18 days of absence.
- Severe Absence: Students absent more than 50% of the time, requiring intensive support and potential flexible adjustments to facilitate regular attendance.
