Dear Parent / Carer
As you will know, good school attendance is vital to your child’s education and wellbeing. Children who attend school regularly are more likely to feel settled in school, maintain friendships, keep up with their learning, and gain the greatest benefit from their education.
As a school we continue to use the ‘Callio’ (‘Wise up’) project to regularly review attendance.
The target for all pupils is a minimum of 95% attendance at the end of the school year. There are 38 weeks in a school year. Below you will find the Callio colour banding framework which you may find helpful - you will see that if your child misses half a day a week, their attendance will be 90%. They will have missed 95 lessons, which is 19 days away from school, which is almost 4 weeks. If they missed this amount of time every year, by the time they sit their GCSEs, they will have missed half a year of secondary education.
At the end of each half term, you will have a letter informing you of the attendance category your child is in for that half term as well as for the year so far. We also use this information in liaison with CCBC Education Welfare Service to support attendance. The school’s attendance procedures flow chart is enclosed for your reference.
What can you do at home to support your child?
- Talk about the importance of attending school every day, arriving on time, and attending every lesson. This is the expectation unless a child is unwell and needs to remain at home to recover. Regular attendance at school sets up good behaviours for regular attendance at work in the future.
- Try not to schedule dental or medical appointments during school hours.
- Please arrange family holidays during scheduled school holidays so your child does not miss their lessons (there are thirteen holiday weeks each year for pupils). We do not authorise school holidays in term time.
If you have any medical evidence (such as a photo of an appointment slip or medicine label), these can be emailed straight to the attendance team via attendance@stcenydd.co.uk.
Punctuality is also vitally important as being punctual to school encourages habits of good timekeeping and reduces the stress of walking in late. We have adopted a ‘late is late’ approach and as such pupils should be on site by 8.30am in readiness for registration at 8.35am. If a pupil is late arriving due to a valid reason such as an unavoidable medical appointment or the late arrival of a CCBC school bus, the late mark will be authorised. Please provide appointment information as needed.
If your child arrives late to school, you will receive a text message so you can follow this up with your child. If no valid reason is provided, your child will be given a break time detention with Mr Dickinson. Failure to attend this will result in an after school detention later in the week. We appreciate your support in encouraging your child to arrive at school on time.
Whilst we understand that absence from school is very occasionally unavoidable, your support in encouraging your child to school on time and ready to learn each day is proven to improve the success and future opportunities for your child.
Thank you for your support.
Yours sincerely
Miss Rebecca V. Collins – Headteacher
Mr Lee Dickinson – Assistant Headteacher with responsibility for Attendance
