Attendance

Dear parent / guardian

Attendance for the new academic year

I am delighted to be able to write to you about our new approach to supporting you as families with the attendance of your child. 

It is important that we work together to ensure that your child’s attendance at school is the highest priority to ensure that they are given every opportunity to be ‘School Ready, Work Ready & Life Ready’. Our aim is to support excellent levels of attendance for all students to fulfil their potential at The Bridge Centre. 

You will see below, our six new ‘Attendance Foundations’; supported by clear thresholds for actions to be taken and what to expect from us as a school to best support you and your child in achieving the highest attendance.

As a school, we will always do what we can to work with you, and your child, to ensure that attendance remains high or improves where there are absences. Where possible, we want to promote working together, to avoid taking statutory action, however, I am minded to inform you that we have a duty to involve the Local Authority Education Welfare Service, if your child is absent for 20 individual sessions or more (the equivalent of 10 school days) in a 12 week period, excluding school holidays.

We believe that we all have a responsibility for ensuring that children can attend school, every day. 

As a school, we will:

• develop and maintain a whole-school culture that promotes the benefit of high attendance
• work with students and their families, building strong relationships, to support high levels of attendance and punctuality and understand any barriers to attendance
• investigate unexplained or unjustified absence, applying sanctions when appropriate
• regularly monitor, review and analyse attendance and absence data including to identify pupils or cohorts that require attendance support and to set targets for the future
• ensure that all legislation and guidance are complied with and reflected in its policies and procedures, including the non-statutory attendance guidance issued by the Department for Education, working together to improve school attendance (2022)

Working in partnership, we expect parents and carers to: 

• ensure that their children arrive at the school on time and in the correct uniform
• promote the importance of regular school attendance at home
• follow the correct procedure for reporting the absence of their children from the school, which includes contacting the main office by 09:00am at the latest on each day of the absence. If you child is absent for more than 2 days due to an illness or medical condition, we would need to see evidence from a GP or doctor to that effect
• avoid unnecessary absences, by arranging appointments outside of the school week
• keep the school informed of any circumstances which may affect their children’s attendance 
• not take their children out of education for holidays during term time 
• inform the school in advance of any proposed change of address for their child(ren), along with the name of the parent with whom the child shall live
• observe and fulfil their responsibilities set out in the guidance issued by the Department for Education: Summary table of responsibilities for school attendance

We therefore expect students to: 

• attend school every day and on time
• follow the correct procedure if they arrive to school late 

I look forward to working with you in ensuring all students achieve the highest attendance moving forwards. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at the school. 

Yours faithfully

Senior Leader for Safeguarding & Attendance