ATTENDANCE

Regular attendance at school is essential to ensure uninterrupted progress and to enable children to extend their potential. The attendance pattern for all children is monitored weekly with the school seeking to work actively with parents to ensure a regular pattern is maintained. We expect all children on roll to attend every day, when the school is in session as long as they are fit and healthy enough to do so.

However if a child is unable to attend school parents need to:

• Phone into school on the first morning before 9am explaining why their child is absent
• or via email shalfleet@fosay.co.uk or yarmouth@fosay.co.uk 
• You need to explain the reason in some detail; ‘not well’ and ‘too ill’ are not acceptable explanations
• Every day the child is absent, parents need to ring in to explain the absence
• On the day of return, a letter or an email must be sent it to school explaining the child’s absence. This is kept with the records.

Without a letter (or email) explaining the absence the dates will be recorded as ‘unauthorised’.

Percentage attendance and punctuality are checked weekly. Here children are identified by the school and termly by Education welfare Service, for persistent lates and for those whose attendance is of concern. Letters are then sent home to parents, identifying the concerns. With no improvement, a meeting is arranged with the school, parents and the EWS to discuss ways to improve the situation.

Further monitoring takes place and with no improvement the parents may be fined.

During parent evenings parents are provided with an attendance report.

The school is proactive in encouraging parents to not take holidays during term time. Applications for a holiday are looked at on an individual basis and a letter is sent in return to the parents explaining the Head teacher’s response. If the holiday time is recorded as unauthorised, parents are informed that they could be fined as a result.