Attendance and Absence
Attendance
The March CE Primary School aims to maximise attendance and secure high levels of punctuality in order to ensure that all pupils have full access to their education. If allowed to remain unchecked persistent absence and lateness can significantly impact on a pupil’s progress and achievement. Our regular communication with parents play a vital role in ensuring that this is achieved.
In line with the 1996 Education Act, we expect all children on roll to attend school every day, when the school is in session, as long as they are fit and healthy enough to do so. We will endeavour to encourage our children to attend, and where necessary put in place support plans to help achieve this.
We believe that the most important factor in promoting good attendance is development of positive attitudes towards school. We strive to create a happy and rewarding environment for all children where they feel safe and nurtured therefore wanting to come to school. We will make the best provision we can for those children who, for whatever reason, are prevented from coming to school.
We recognise that children alone cannot ensure their regular and punctual attendance at school. At all times, parents are encouraged to take an active role in the school life and to share and support their children’s learning. Though our home-school agreement, parents agree to ensuring their child’s the regular and punctual attendance. As part of our annual written reports to parents, the children’s attendance records are shared.
Please see our attendance policy below. This details our approach to attendance management.
Absence
Absence from the school should be notified to the office as soon as possible, especially if this is due to illness of an infectious or contagious nature.
If your child has had sickness or diarrhoea then they must be off school for a full 48 hours from the last episode before returning to school, even if they appear well. This is to avoid the risk of infection to other children and staff.
Please notify the school office and your child's teacher of any medical or dental appointments beforehand so that your child is registered correctly and does not miss being booked in for school dinner. As far as possible, appointments should be outside of school hours, so that children do not miss their time in school.
Holidays are not permitted during term time unless in exceptional circumstances. Any requests for absence must be made on the form obtainable from the school office, which must be returned to the headteacher. You will then receive a copy of the form which will contain information about your child's attendance last year at school, current attedance, how many requests you have previously made for absence from school and whether or not your request has been authorised or not and the reasons why.
The Locality Attendance and Absence Policy can be found in the Policy Section