Our expectation at Myton is that all children have attendance of over 95% and strive for higher.
− Attendance of 90% is the equivalent of one day off per fortnight and 6 months off in their secondary school life (Years 7-11).
− Attendance of 80% is the equivalent of one day off per week and one full year off in their secondary school life (Years 7-11).
− No child can achieve their best with attendance below 95%.
In a bygone era, when my mum packed me off to school, there were three things she would look for when confronted by a moody teenager trying to argue that he needed a day off: a visible broken bone, actually being sick, or a temperature which even she couldn’t ignore. Everything else was: “Go to school and see if you feel better.”
We have a good record of attendance at Myton which makes me think that this approach, which toughens up young people ready for the workplace, is still applied. However, when looking at the attendance data and speaking to students and families about it, there are plenty of examples where low attendance seems to be tolerated. If a child loses over 5% of their learning, they could well lose over 5% of their exam score and could slip a grade. To avoid being classed as a ‘persistent absentee’ a child must attend over 90% of the time. Not only does being a ‘persistent absentee’ open up a family to legal consequences, it also means a child will almost certainly slip grades. And if being off 10% of the time becomes normal, they are likely to struggle in the workplace.
School attendance is examined closely by us, by Ofsted and by other agencies. There are children who, through no fault of their own (for example, medical diagnosis or bereavement), have low attendance and we work with those families to support them. However, we have other children whose attendance is below our threshold of 95%, and should you be in a position of making a judgement call on whether they come to school, I would suggest “Go to school and see if you feel better” is the one to take. You will notice they soon stop asking and just get on with it, just as I did.
Click here to return to the current newsletter
