Attendance Update

18 Nov Attendance Update

Dear Parents,

At JRCS we aim for the best outcomes for our students.

As was the case in the summer term, school attendance is compulsory for all school aged children who are registered at a school. You may have already received a letter highlighting our concerns with your child’s attendance. In school your child may be placed on attendance monitoring with their form tutor. This is to assist them in raising their attendance.

We respect that we are now dealing with COVID, but we must now accept this is going to be around for some time.

Your child can come to school with a cold as they did before COVID. As long, as you have been lateral flow testing regularly and there is no temperature, there is no reason we cannot continue to operate as we did pre-pandemic.

NHS guidelines for symptoms are

• a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)
• a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)
• a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you’ve noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal

The Government guidelines state that Attendance is mandatory. 

The usual rules on attendance continue to apply, including:

• parents’ duty to ensure that their child of compulsory school age attends regularly at the school where the child is a registered pupil
• schools’ responsibilities to record attendance and follow up absence
• the ability to issue sanctions, including fixed penalty notices, in line with local authorities’ codes of conduct
• the duty on local authorities to put in place arrangements for identifying, and to follow up with, children missing education

Non-attendance which is not authorised by the school (i.e. it is unauthorised) could lead to statutory interventions and a prosecution under Section 444 (1) Education Act, 1996 or the issue of a Penalty Notice under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act, 2003.

Reporting absences

It is a parent/carer’s responsibility to report their child as absent on the first and each subsequent day of absence. A call must be made to the absence line on 0208 270 6222which is available 24 hours, choose the student absent line option. This line has an answer machine which will ask you for the name, form class and the reason for the child’s absence. The exact reason must be left on the message, ie, bad cold or sore throat; saying just unwell is not acceptable. Failure to report an absence may result in you being visited at home by our Student Services Manager.  If for any reason you are unable to call the absence line, your child should return to school with a note for their form tutor explaining absence.

If your child’s attendance is causing us concern you may be asked to provide information supporting your child’s absence. The school must make the decision whether to authorise an absence. Supporting information is often required in the form of GP/Consultant/Appointment cards.

We thank you for your continued support.