At Cragside, we take attendance and punctuality very seriously. Every child attending school every day is always our goal.
We know that school keeps children safe, educates, and prepares for the future. So, we don’t want any child to miss out. With this in mind, we carefully monitor our overall attendance, and that of individual children.
We do realise that absences due to illness or medical matters can be unavoidable and school is not the place for a child to be if they are very unwell. If you are unsure, please send them in and we will be in touch if we feel they are too unwell to be in school.
The Department for Education guidance is as follows:
It is usually appropriate for parents and carers to send their children to school with mild respiratory illnesses. This would include general cold symptoms: a minor cough, runny nose or sore throat. However, children should not be sent to school if they have a temperature of 38°C or above. We would encourage you to share the NHS ‘Is my child too ill for school?’ guidance with parents and carers in your schools and communities which has further information.
If your child is going to be absent, please phone the school as soon as possible on the first day of absence to inform us and let us know the reason why. We ask that you do this so we know from the beginning of the day where your child is. If they are not in, and we have not been informed of their absence, we will be in touch with you as quickly as possible.
From September 2013, the Head teacher no longer has the authority to authorise absences for the purpose of taking a family holiday except in exceptional circumstances. We respectfully ask parents and carers to avoid booking holidays during term time. If, however, you believe there are exceptional reasons why your child needs to be absent from school you need to make your request in writing stating the dates, where possible providing evidence and explaining the exceptional reasons for the absence. Should your child’s absence not be authorised through our absence procedure prior to it happening then we will refer it to our Educational Welfare Officer.
Where a child’s level or pattern of absences becomes a concern, we will discuss this with the parent or carer and will involve the services of our Educational Welfare Officer to help improve the situation.
Please click on the link below for a full copy of our attendance policy.
