Letters

Attendance

A young girl is seen wearing her academy uniform whilst sitting at a desk, interacting with different coloured objects.
19
Sep

Dear Parents/Carers,

Regular attendance at school is essential to promote the education of all pupils and to enable them to make the most of the educational opportunities available to them. Our ethos encourages children to feel that their presence in school is important and that they are missed when they are absent or late. At Peninsula East Primary Academy we take seriously our responsibility to monitor and promote the regular attendance of all our pupils. We acknowledge that irregular attendance seriously disrupts continuity of learning, undermines educational progress, can lead to underachievement and low attainment and impedes the child’s ability to develop friendship groups within school. All children are sometimes reluctant to attend school but we need to work together to support them.

Our Attendance officer at PEPA is Mrs Dyke and she will be your first point of call with attendance and she also tracks and checks in with parents about their child’s attendance and offers any support that we can give to both parents/carers and children. You are also able to track your child’s attendance on the MyChildAtSchool app. Please see this link to our Attendance Policy, which we work collaboratively on with the Medway Attendance advisors.

Systems and Structures Around Attendance

100%

Termly Attendance Certificate
End of year prize incentive for winning class overall

99% – 96%

Weekly reward for class and Attendance Ted for EYFS/KS1 and KS2
Golden ticket raffle if attended 5 days per week. Raffle with prizes drawn at the end of each term.

On first day of absence

First day calling will take place by the Primary Office or parents can phone the office to inform them.

95% – 93%

  1. Letter sent home highlighting concerning attendance and notification of next step.

95% – 93%

  1. If attendance has dropped but remains within 93%-95% – trigger letter is sent again
  2. If attendance plateaus or increases but remains within 93% – 95% – no letter is sent

93% – 91%

  1. Formal letter sent home informing parents of severity of poor attendance and next steps in the process.
  2. Attendance meeting with the Principal and the Attendance officer.
  3. Attendance Plan in place to improve.
  4. Medical Evidence is required to authorise absence due to illness.

90% and below

  1. Referral is made by school to Medway Council Attendance and Advisory Service for Schools and Academies (AASSA)
  2. Any further meetings will be held with Principal and AAP.

Due to the positive impact of ‘Golden Tickets’, we will be continuing with our attendance incentive as we are continuing to work to improve our whole school attendance. Those children that have the lowest attendance are falling behind their peers in their classroom learning. Whilst we appreciate that sometimes the children do pick up illnesses and cannot be in school, attendance at school has such an impact on each child and we want to always encourage that they attend to help them socially and emotionally as well as in their learning. Excellent attendance at school also helps with transition as the children move through the school and ensures that they are not behind their peers when they move to secondary school.

Golden Ticket - Attendance: You've got to be in to win.

Golden Tickets

To receive a golden ticket, the children need to attend a full week of school and at the end of each week (every Friday) they will receive a golden ticket from their class teacher. These will be gathered together by the office so that there can be a prize draw at the end of term assembly. We will separate the tickets so that there will be two prize draws. One will be for the whole of KS2 and one will be for Reception class and KS1. There will be two winners drawn from each, so four winners per term in total and these children will be awarded with prizes, such as family cinema vouchers and other exciting family prizes for you all to enjoy. The more that the children attend school during each term then the more chances they will have to win a prize at the end of the term.

As well as this, we will still continue with our 100% termly attendance certificates and Mrs Rimmer will continue to have termly prizes with classes who have the best attendance each term, which includes fun activities such as class bingo games.

We also give out prizes of cakes to the overall classes with the best attendance all year and vouchers for those children who have achieved 100% attendance all year.

Mrs Dyke will also be monitoring children who are regularly late into school as this impacts on their morning learning in class and will work to support parents/carers with lateness to ensure that children are attending school on time and not missing out on learning as well as ensuring that they have a positive start to the school day.

Please remember that if you request a leave of absence, this needs to be made in writing to Mrs Rimmer and requests will be considered on a case by case basis. There are more details on requests for leave for absence on our website.

We look forward to celebrating excellent attendance this year.

Kind Regards,

Mrs L Rimmer
Principal

Mrs L Rimmer

Principal at Peninsula East Primary Academy