Don’t miss a moment of the greatest years of your life!

At Dymchurch Primary we know that regular attendance is directly linked to raising achievement and develops skills for life and work. Please support the school in this by ensuring that your child attends school regularly and arrives ready to learn and on time at 8.45am.

Being 20 minutes late every day means you miss 100 minutes of Maths every week. Multiply this by 39 weeks a year = 3900 minutes missed a year. Basically this is 65 hours missed a year!

Attendance Matters
Primary national pupil attendance was around 96% pre COVID. This means that a child needs to attend school for at least 177 out of 190 days to meet national expectations.

The Trust Attendance Lead for Our Community Multi Academy Trust works with all of the academy schools providing a detailed overview of attendance across the school. OCMAT have very clear and detailed systems and procedures in place to manage absence and attendance across the academy schools.

The Aim

• Continue to improve Attendance to the pre Covid 19 levels
• Reduce PA
• Improve existing attendance systems / processes to support continued and sustained improvements
• To create an ethos in which good Attendance is the norm and every child aims for excellent Attendance
• To ensure Attendance and Punctuality is a key priority for school
• Enable Dymchurch to make informed use of Attendance data to target interventions appropriately, focussing on the key demographic groups highlighted in the 2022 DFE paper.

Understanding types of absence

Every ½ day absence from school, by law, has to be classified as either authorised or unauthorised. This is why information about the cause of absence is always asked for.

Authorised absences are mornings or afternoons away from school for a good reason such as illness, medical appointments and emergencies.

An absence is classified as Unauthorised, if the reason was not recognised as acceptable. The Department for Education (DfE) and Local Education Authorities provide information for schools as what is acceptable and what is not.

Examples of reasons that would not be accepted:

• A birthday
• A shopping trip
• Day trips
• Holidays – unless a request has been submitted and agreed as exceptional circumstances

What should I do if my child is absent from school?
Contact the school office on the first morning before and notify us of the absence and provide a reason.
School will phone on Day 1 of an absence and do a home visit after 2 days.

Punctuality
It is very important that all children arrive on time. If your child arrives late, they will not be able to come into school via usual morning gates but should instead come through the main school entrance. We will then be able to mark registers and ensure your child is marked for a school dinner.

Please note that if your children arrives at school later than 9:30, we are required to mark them as absent for that half day session.

If children are regularly late, a parent will be expected to attend a meeting to look at how punctuality can be improved.

Promoting Attendance and Support
We believe that working together with parents is the best way to result in positive attendance outcomes for our children.

We have lots of high profile rewards and systems in school to promote good attendance and punctuality with the children.

Certificates and prizes are given termly in recognition of good attendance and improved attendance.

Our FLO, and the Attendance Team at OCMAT, are happy to work with both children and families to improve attendance and punctuality. Come and talk to us if you are having problems.

Attendance Monitoring
As attendance and punctuality is so important to us, we cannot be complacent where there are instances of unacceptable, low pupil attendance, or if pupils are regularly late to school.

The Local Authority is keen that we adopt measures and involve external agencies if the level of attendance requires us to do so. Our school database generates reports termly and letters are sent to ALL parents where attendance is below 90%.

Dear parent/carer

I would like to advise you about important changes to legislation announced by the Department for Education (DfE) with regard to holidays in term time.

From 1 September 2013, schools are no longer allowed to authorise any requests for children to be taken out of school for a holiday during term time.

Requests for leave can only be granted in exceptional circumstances, and a holiday would not be considered exceptional.

Requests for leave must also be made to the school in advance, as the DfE have told schools that they cannot authorise any absences after they have been taken.

Parents may receive a penalty notice if their child is absent from school without permission.

We appreciate the challenges that some parents face when booking holidays, particularly during the school holidays. However, regular attendance at school is vital in helping children and young people to achieve their full potential and get the best possible start in life.

Be in Line at quarter to nine!

As well as making sure your child comes to school every day it is extremely important that children are at school on time.

They should be in the line at ten to nine (8.50am) (lined up in the playground ready to start the day.) Even just a few minutes a day adds up over the year, we begin our learning as soon as we enter the classroom working on our reading or getting ready for assembly.  Being late in the morning means missing valuable teaching which equips the children with skills that helps them succeed in later life.

When making doctor, dentist or hospital appointments please try wherever possible to make these for after the end of the school day