Supporting Attendance

At Short Wood, we follow the guidance in Working Together to Improve School Attendance to offer timely and pro-active support for our families. Our aim is to work collaboratively with parents/carers and pupils, to build open and trusting relationships, and to understand, and help remove, any barriers to attendance.

Our approach to supporting attendance begins with high expectations for all. It is our expectation that all children will attend school every day that we are open, expect when they are too ill to attend (see NHS website below for further guidance), or when permission from Mrs Butele has been sought and granted in advance.

Our school day runs from 8:45am to 15:15pm. Gates are open from 8:30am to allow all children to make a prompt start to their school day. Classroom doors are open at 8:35am in Early Years, and 8:40am across the rest of school. Our registers and school gates shut promptly at 8:45am; children arriving after this point will need to enter school through the main office where they will receive an L code to record the lateness. Arrival after 9:15am will result in a U code on the register - this coding affects a child's attendance record.

Short Wood operates an open door policy: parents and carers are always welcome to come into school for advice or support. Please feel free to contact us or just drop into the office to arrange a chat.

As a school, we work hard to monitor attendance. We have a member of our admin team whose role is to look at absences on a daily basis and to contact parents/carers where no reason for the absence has been shared with school by 10am. We also have an Education Welfare Officer on site for half a day a week. Attendance data is carefully tracked and monitored, allowing us to identify emerging patterns of poor attendance in a timely manner. When a child's attendance drops below 95%, support from school will be offered.

As always at Short Wood, our main aim is to address and resolve any issues in a timely and supportive manner, working in partnership to improve outcomes for the child. We do understand that each case is unique, and we will work hard to ensure that the support offered matches the individual needs of the family.

Our first step towards resolving issues is always to listen and understand. Parents and carers are invited into school to discuss possible barriers to attendance and to formulate a plan for how all parties can work together to resolve the issues.

Where necessary, our team would facilitate support, helping parents and carers to access support that they might need in order to improve their child's attendance.

If absence continues in spite of support being provided, or if parents and carers are reluctant to engage with the support we are offering, it may become necessary for us to formalise support. At this stage, our Education Welfare Officer will meet with parents and carers to put a more formal support plan into place.

As a very last resort, where all other avenues have been exhausted, and in order to protect the child's statutory right to an education, our Education Welfare Officer would work in partnership with school and parents/carers to enforce attendance.