Attendance

Going to school regularly is important for your child’s future. Parents are responsible for making sure their children receive full-time education. Talking to your child and their teachers could help solve any problems if your child does not want to go to school.

Good attendance shows secondary schools that your child is reliable.

St. John with St. Michael Primary School records details of all children’s attendance and absence from school. We do so at the beginning of morning and afternoon sessions. If your child is absent, you must inform the school immediately.

The school will record the absence and the Local Authority will receive this information for each child. The Department of Education also receives annual attendance data for the school.

By law, all children of compulsory school age must receive a suitable full-time education. For most parents, this means registering their child at a school. Although some parents choose to make other arrangements to provide a suitable, full-time education.

Once your child is registered at St. John with St. Michael Primary School, the parent is legally responsible for making sure they attend on a regular basis. If your child does not attend school on a regular basis, you could be subject to a fine or be prosecuted in court.

 You can help prevent your child missing school by:

• making sure they understand the importance of good attendance and punctuality.
• taking an interest in their education, ask about schoolwork and encourage them to get involved in school activities.
• discussing any problems they may have at school and letting their teacher or principal know about anything serious.
• not letting children take time off school for minor ailments, particularly those which would not prevent you from going to work.

To avoid disrupting your child’s education, you should arrange appointments and outings:

• after school hours.
• at weekends.
• during school holidays.
• You should not expect St. John with St. Michael Primary School to agree to your child going on holiday during term time.

A child’s school attendance can be affected if there are problems with:

• Bullying.
• Housing or care arrangements.
• Transport to and from school.
• Work and money.

If your child starts missing school, you might not know there is a problem. If there is a problem, please approach their teacher or the school attendance team.

 At Forward As One, it is our ambition to have every child in school every day and therefore a robust and effective attendance strategy is implemented in every school.

Attendance is everybody’s responsibility and Forward As One’s school senior leadership teams strive to build a culture where all staff are clear on their roles and responsibilities and therefore can be held to account. To enable all staff to fulfil their role, clear systems and procedures are implemented and are understood by all and applied consistently.

Forward As One’s approach focuses on preventative measures and swift intervention. This allows leaders to plan for contextual challenges, alongside educating parents on the impact of absence from school both academically and socially.

The key principle underpinning the approach of early intervention is to develop partnerships with parents to understand the barriers and work with families to remove them

FA1 Attendance Strategy

• Increase school Attendance and reduce Persistent Absence to meet set targets.
• Ensure Attendance is well managed within the school, with the appropriate level of resources allocated.
• Enable the school to make informed use of Attendance data to target interventions appropriately, focusing on the key demographic groups highlighted in the 2024 DFE paper.

• create an ethos within the school in which good attendance is recognised as the norm and every child/young person aims for excellent attendance.
• make attendance and punctuality a priority.
• set focused targets to improve individual attendance and whole school attendance levels.
• embed the 5 Foundations of Effective Attendance Practice framework which defines agreed roles and responsibilities and promotes consistency in carrying out designated tasks with respect to promoting attendance and punctuality.
• record and monitor attendance and absenteeism and apply appropriate strategies to minimise absenteeism.
• develop a systematic approach to gathering and analysing relevant attendance data.
• provide support, advice and guidance to; parents, children and young people and develop mutual cooperation between home and the school in encouraging good attendance and in addressing identified attendance issues.

St. John with St. Michael Primary School follows the 5 Foundations of Effective Attendance Practice framework. The approach is evidence-informed and completely child-centred.  Each Foundation is supported by 5 Key Performance Indicators, these are used to ensure the school can embed the Foundations framework and understand the strategic direction regarding attendance improvement. 

The framework allows the school to understand the whole school approach to supporting and improving attendance, this is completely aligned toSt. John with St. Michael Primary School Vision for Education.  We create welcoming environments to allow all children to gain a sense of belonging and ultimately achieve academically through regular school attendance. 

The school policy is translated into practise through the processes and systems we follow. The escalated approach supports children at each stage, parents who do not engage with support understand why, at times, we must follow this process. 

All staff receive attendance training to support the whole school approach, they understand their role in improving attendance. Certain staff are identified to engage in specialist training to continue to support families and children who work with external partners.

We use data information to support children as this allows us to understand the groups, and individuals, who require specific programmes of intervention. Reviewing each programme allows us to understand the effectiveness of support and change what is not working.

Finally, we train and support all staff to understand the ‘root cause’ of concerns. Staff use the wider curriculum to allow all children to feel valued and accept themselves.  We celebrate attendance success and ensure children returning from long absence receive a planned transition.

Please read our Attendance Policy for more information about the importance we place on regular school attendance and punctuality. We follow the guidelines from Lancashire County Council and do not authorise any holidays taken during term time.

SJSM Attendance Policy

Behaviour

 Our school has three simple rules:

‘Be Ready, Be Respectful and Be Safe.’

Our three simple school rules are further explored and explicitly taught in class, assemblies and other school experiences. For example, they might be expanded as follows:

• I will help myself and others to learn by being in the right place, with the right equipment and ready to listen and complete my work.

• I will listen and talk politely to adults and other pupils; and look after equipment and other people’s possessions. 

• I will be kind and look after myself and others, following appropriate instructions from adults.