Attendance

Here at Akaal Primary School we pride ourselves on good attendance from all of our children. It is very important for a child to be in school for the full duration of the day as any minute lost takes away from valuable learning time.

Our attendance officer is Miss Hill; She works closely with all the parents to make sure, if there is a problem, we can all work together to get our children to school on time. Miss Hill has a close relationship with our Education Welfare Officer (EWO) Meena Kanda. The EWO role is to make sure parents are bringing their children to school in line with the government rules and regulations and will step in if a child is repeatedly late or missing days from school.

If a child does not arrive at school on time, Miss Hill will call their parent/guardian and ask the reason why the child is not in school. If the absence fits with the acceptable criteria, Miss Hill will then inform the class teacher and update the register. If Miss Hill cannot get a response from a parent/guardian the following steps are taken:

• A second attempt will be made to call
• Where appropriate a call will also be made to the alternate/emergency contacts
• A text message will be sent to all contact numbers, asking for a call to be made to school
• A home visit will be made to locate the missing child.

If the child cannot be located, the child will be classed as missing and Miss Hill will contact the EWO and other safeguarding agencies.

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Appointments

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It is important that all routine medical/dental appointments should be made out of school time, as it is important that your child is in school. We do accommodate for unavoidable appointments for example – if your child needs to see a specialist team in the hospital or when families are called to the embassy etc.

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Absence Requests

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If you feel that it is necessary for your child to have time off from school during term time, you will need to fill in an Absence Request form. These are available from Miss Hill in the school office. Such requests should be for extraordinary events, not holidays.

This will then be submitted to Miss Parkes who will apply the school/Derby policy. Miss Parkes will then ask you to attend a meeting to discuss her decision. If the holiday is not granted and you still go, the EWO is informed and proceedings will start for the Penalty Notice process. Penalty Notices are issued via Derby City Council. No money from the Penalty Notices comes to Akaal Primary School.

We ask for all holidays to be taken during our school holiday closure times to avoid children missing their learning and so that a family does not incur the Penalty Notice charge.

Akaal Primary School has made amendments to the standard holiday pattern to provide 2 weeks break in October and February as we know many of our families use this time to travel to family in Europe and India.