Attendance
Children get the best possible start in life when they attend school on time every day. Children who miss school frequently are more likely to fall behind.
By law, parents and carers must ensure their children attend school. Parents can be fined if they fail to ensure that their child attends school regularly.
At Hovingham, improving attendance is everyone’s business and we work with parents and carers to ensure that all pupils are encouraged and supported to attend school regularly. We are as aiming for over 96% whole school attendance.
Our plan to improve attendance
We have 6 priorities to help our school achieve a whole school 96% attendance.
|
Develop and maintain a whole school culture that promotes the benefits of high attendance |
Good attendance is learned behaviour, we must recognise the importance and develop and encourage good patterns of attendance from the outset, this is integral to our safeguarding culture and ethos, this involves all staff, children and parents knowing ‘good attendance is everyone’s business’ |
|||
|
Have a clear school attendance policy which all leaders, staff, pupils and parents understand |
An effective whole school culture of good attendance is underpinned by clear expectations, procedures and responsibilities. At Hovingham, we will have a clear policy, which can be downloaded here. |
|||
|
Day to day processes for improving attendance
|
Alongside accurate recording of attendance and absence, we have a robust and consistent approach to day to process which track and follow up absence and poor punctuality. At Hovingham we will have systems and processes in place which meet the needs of our school community to ensure that there is support and challenge. |
|||
|
Regularly analyse, review and discuss attendance and absence data to identify pupils or cohorts that require support with their attendance and put effective strategies in place |
As poor attendance is habitual, prevention and early intervention is crucial, we recognise that the key to early prevention and intervention s regular data analysis so that immediate support can be put into place for individuals, classes and cohorts and where necessary use support from our cluster. |
|||
|
Build strong relationships with families, listen to and understand barriers to attendance and work with families to remove them |
Relationships are central to Hovingham and are underpinned by our value of respect, we believe that the foundation to good attendance is to build a positive relationship between home and school, from the very early starts in Nursery. |
|||
|
Work together, to ensure there is multi-disciplinary support for families where barriers to attendance are complex |
We work with the local communities to remove barriers to attendance. As such, it is of huge benefit for Hovingham to work with the cluster and have regular LA targeting support meetings with attendance leads, appropriate supervision and sharing transition information. |
|||
How to report a child’s absence
Children sometimes have to miss school because of illness or if they have long term medical issues. If this is the case, parents should contact school the same day to let us know the reason that their child is not in school.
Guidance and support for parents
We have a dedicated attendance team, led by Mrs Keeley Davidson insert picture who works with parents to help form good habits for good school attendance.
Mrs K Davison, Attendance Lead
