Attendance & Punctuality
Upton Primary School is committed to supporting the children to achieve the best possible attendance, to enable every child to achieve their full potential. There is a strong link between good school attendance and achieving a good education. Children who frequently miss school may fall behind in their learning and development and we work closely with families to avoid this situation. We are proud of our children's good attendance at Upton but also remain determined to improve this further with your support.
How Upton Supports Attendance?
ATTENDANCE REWARDS
Class attendance is monitored on a weekly basis. The classes with the highest attendance percentage in both EYFS, Key Stage 1 and 2 are rewarded with class certificates and keep the school attendance bear for the week.
Attendance certificates and prizes are given to those children who achieve 100% attendance in each half term. At the end of the academic year, all pupils with 100% attendance will receive a certificate and will also be entered into a prize draw!
We also award 'Determination' certificates to those children who achieve good attendance despite experiencing difficulties such as medical conditions.
HOLIDAYS
In keeping with goverment guidance and the Local Authority advice, family holidays will not be authorised by Upton Primary School during term time. If you decide to take your child on holiday during term time you may ultimately be at risk of receiving a penalty fine from the Attendance Advisory Service. If you need to take your child out of school due to exceptional circumstances you will need to put this in writing to our Headteacher.
FAST TRACK
Upton is committed to the Local Authority Scheme ‘Fast Track’. Children are selected for Fast Track when their attendance is a continued cause for concern and parents fail to engage with the school. Regular meetings are held with the Educational Welfare Officer, and parents, to monitor the attendance of those children on Fast Track. When a child is absent through illness, parents must provide medical evidence from the GP, either by letter, a copy of the prescription or, by bringing the named medication to the school office as evidence of their child’s absence. Failure to follow this process will result in the absence being recorded as 'unauthorised'. If there is no improvement in attendance over a period of time, the school will refer the child to the EWO who may then take steps to issue a penalty fine or bring about court action.
Please see the information below recently received from the Bexley Education Welfare Service Manager. The letter can be found below:
Persistent absence will impact severely on educational achievement and ultimately GCSE and A level grades. From now on GCSE and A level marking will not be taking the pandemic into account, as was the case in the previous couple of post pandemic years.
In order to address the serious problem of persistent absence in accordance with the DFE expectations, alongside our usual processes, Bexley will now include the issuing of Fixed Penalty Notice Warnings with the follow up Penalty Notices to parents/carers of students referred to the Education Welfare Service who have unauthorised absences from the start of the Autumn Term. Attending late after registers have closed will also be marked as absence.
If any parents are having difficulty then please come and speak to our office team.
For further information from the DFE 'Working together to improve school attendance' click the link below:
For further information from the DFE on attendance please click the link below:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-pupil-absence
If your child’s attendance for the year is:
95% = 10 days of learning have been missed
90% = 20 days of learning have been missed
85% = 40 days of learning have been missed
75% = 50 days of learning have been missed
70% = 60 days of learning have been missed
The school's attendance date for 2022-2023 can be found below.
