What Should I Include in an Attendance Policy?
Attendance Policy Checklist
If you have reached a point of review for your school’s attendance policy, we would like to offer this checklist to support your review process and ensure that all the key elements are in your revised document.
Introduction and Aims of the policy - A chance to outline the school’s philosophy and approach to attendance. Highlighting the safeguarding and legal responsibilities of the school as well as the importance of attendance in driving a range of positive outcomes for pupils. This may be a place to introduce a particular whole school strategy and set a target for all pupils to achieve. Identify which senior leader has responsibility for the strategic leadership of attendance.
Set out your school’s expectations regarding attendance for specific stakeholders – pupils, teachers/tutors, senior leaders and parents. Be clear and concise in what their responsibility is in relation to ensuring, maintaining, and improving attendance. Please avoid making it a long ‘to do’ list; cover the absolute essentials.
Basic School Protocols – times for start and end of the day, registration times – you may decide to state what time you’re a.m. and p.m. register close, but this is not a statutory requirement. What time children may enter the site, how they will be kept safe etc. Who the parents should contact if they have a concern about their child’s attendance, is absent etc. Introduce your school’s key attendance staff and give contact details.
Punctuality – the importance of good punctuality. You might give some data i.e. if you’re 6 mins late every morning you have missed 30 minutes of phonics a week. Focus on the learning time that may be lost. Outline the school’s response and procedures for poor punctuality.
Absence Protocols – Legal responsibilities of parents. What are the expectations of parents if their child is absent? What are the school’s absence protocols? If you can set out the school’s protocols in a flow chart and include it as an appendix, it can be very useful to staff and parents. You may like to set out common scenarios i.e., absent for a medical appointment, illness, religious observance. State the school’s staged response to absence.
Authorised and Unauthorised Absences. You may give some examples and/or a definition to inform parents about what absence will be authorised/unauthorised. If you don’t decide to have a separate section, this is where we would mention the process for applying for leave of absence and term time holidays. Perhaps include an application form as an appendix.
Persistent Absence – Inform stakeholders as to when a pupil would be identified as PA, what measures the school will take support a pupil out of PA or what measures will be followed if a pupil remains PA without a genuine reason and there is no improvement.
Penalty Notices – outline succinctly the law in relation to a school issuing a PN, the cost, timeline etc. You may like to give a link to the local authority website so they may check information.
Pupils Moving to a New Address and/or School – make it clear what parents should do to ensure the details on the school’s admissions register is correct.
CME – Outline how the school will make every effort to locate an absent child and what the procedure will be in relation to referring it to the local authority when a child meets the CME criteria for referral.
The school’s strategy for improving the attendance of pupils – share the whole school strategic plan for improving attendance. How are pupils recognised and rewarded? What interventions will support pupils and at what point?
How will the school support pupils whose attendance is a concern? It is re-assuring for parents to know what kind of support will be offered in school or even the names of external services, which may work with pupils to improve their attendance
Reference articles and documents that stakeholders may find useful – i.e., local authority guidance, DfE parental guidance, new articles etc.
Good luck and if you need any further advice then please contact us at admin@anchoredschools.com