Attendance & Punctuality
As a parent/carer you want the best for your children. Having a good education is an important factor in opening up more opportunities in adult life. Did you know that:
- A child who is absent one day a week misses an equivalent of two years of their school life
- 90% of young people with absence rates below 85% fail to achieve five or more good grades of GCSE and around one third achieve no GCSE’s at all
- Poor examination results limit young people’s options and poor attendance suggests to colleges and employers that these students are unreliable
- Poor school attendance is also closely associated with crime, a quarter of school ago offenders have truanted repeatedly
- At least 1 million children are missed each year through unauthorised absence
Qualifications may seem a long way off for you and your children but 1 absence at any stage leads to gaps in your child’s learning. This in turn can:
- Mean that they fall behind in work
- Affect their motivation
- Affect their enjoyment of learning
- Lead to poor behaviour
- Affect their desire to attend school regularly
- Affect their confidence in school
- Mean they miss out on the social life of school and extra-curricular opportunities and experiences
- Affect their ability to have or keep friendships
Your responsibilities as a parent By law, all children of compulsory school age must receive a suitable full-time education. As a parent, you have legal responsibilities to make sure this happens – either by registering your child at a school or by making other arrangements to give them a suitable, fill-time education. Once your child is registered at a school, you are legally responsible for making sure they attend regularly. This means your child should not have sessions of unauthorised absence.