Excellent attendance and being at school on time is crucial to success. We encourage every child to aim for 100% attendance to maximise their learning opportunities and help them to achieve their full potential.
Evidence shows that pupils who have excellent attendance achieve more, and make better progress – both academically and socially. We work closely with parents to support them in helping their child to understand the importance of good attendance – laying the foundations for future success at secondary school and beyond to the work place.
Pupil attendance is closely monitored, and unexplained absence will be followed up. This includes where pupils fall below our minimum attendance expectation rate of 95%. Parents are asked to follow the procedure below in case of unavoidable absence, including for medical reasons. We also ask parents to contact us if there are any issues that may impact on their child’s ability to attend, so that we can provide help and support with this, including making adjustments so that pupils are able to attend.
Parents have a legal responsibility for making sure that their children of compulsory school age receive a suitable full-time education, our aim is to promote this and support. This links to statutory guidance, ‘Parental responsibility measures’ and the new DFE 2022 ‘Working together to improve school attendance’. This guidance is extremely clear, consequently, we have place ‘tiers of support’. Our Wellbeing Lead, Mrs Bates and Safeguarding and Learning mentor, Miss Short, are key contacts; however, all members of staff are here to support.
Please see our school Attendance Policy, located at the bottom of this page, for more information.
If you need support with your child's attendance, please contact the school and we will support you the best we can.
Tier 1: Promote attendance in the school newsletter.
Tier 2: Keep in touch with families and regular discussions. The Headteacher and teachers are present at start and end of each day, termly Parents’ Evenings, meetings with Wellbeing Lead, when needed.
Tier 3: Contact from school team to support when absence is a concern, aim to support.
Tier 4. Contact from leadership team to support where absence is a concern, aim to support.
Tier 5: Letter from Headteacher when attendance continues to be persistent. Persistent is below 90% (equal to one day off every fortnight).
Tier 6: Fixed Penalty Notice. Penalty notices. Where the pupil’s absence has not been authorised and attendance is below the national threshold. Parenting Contracts for irregular attendance. The guidance is very clear that holidays must not be taken in term time as this causes severe disruption to a child’s education and impacts long term educational outcomes.
The name and contact details of the school staff member pupils and parents should contact about attendance on a day-to-day basis is: Miss Short.
Telephone: 01260 228088
Email: admin@daven.cheshire.sch.uk
We monitor all absence, and the reasons that are given, thoroughly.
If a child is absent from school the parent must follow these procedures:
- Contact the school on the first day of absence before 9.30 am. The school has an answer phone available to leave a message if nobody is available to take your call, or you may call into school personally and speak to the office staff
- Please keep in touch with school with subsequent days’ absence and updates
- Ensure that your child returns to school as soon as possible and you provide any medical evidence, if requested, to support the absence
If your child is absent, we will:
- Telephone or text you on the first, and every subsequent day of absence, if we have not heard from you; however, it is your responsibility to contact us
- If we are unable to contact parents by telephone, we will telephone emergency contact numbers, send letters home and a home visit may be made in the interests of safeguarding
- A referral will be made to Local Authority if no contact has been made with parents by the 10th day of absence at which point your child will be “Missing from education.).
If absence continues, we will:
- School team will contact you if your child’s attendance is below 95%, or punctuality is a concern
- Member of the leadership team will contact you/ if your child’s attendance is below 90% or punctuality is a concern. Contact aims to build positive relationships, discuss – how can we help?
- We will provide pastoral/wellbeing support where required.
- Develop support for pupils with medical conditions, special educational needs and disabilities,
- Create a personalised action/support plan/identify any barriers to attendance
- Offer signposting support to other agencies or services if appropriate/Refer the matter to the Local Authority for relevant sanctions if attendance deteriorates following the above actions.