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.