At Willow Primary School we aim to provide all of our children with the maximum opportunities to fulfil their potential.
Regular and punctual school attendance is of great importance in ensuring that all children have full access to the curriculum. Valuable learning time is lost when children are absent or late. At Willow, most parents understand the need for regular and punctual attendance and work in partnership with the school to achieve this.
Children should be at school, on time, every day the school is open unless the reason for absence is unavoidable. Ensuring your child’s regular attendance at school is the parent/carers legal responsibility and permitting absence from school without good reason creates an offence in law and can result in prosecution.
As a primary school, we hope to lay the foundations for good habits by ensuring good attendance and punctuality right from the first day in Reception. Every day in primary school matters and lost time is not easily made up.
Different patterns of absence have different effects. Missing odd days here and there can be absorbed. Missing odd days more frequently leads to disrupted learning, both for the actual lessons lost and continuity between lessons – the days following an absence are also disrupted as the child struggles to make sense due to gaps in learning. Missing large chunks of time results in the child missing whole units of work, which are difficult to make up. In cases of extended illness, where absence from school is unavoidable, the school will give parents details of the work covered.
At Willow our attendance target is 95% for all of our pupils.
We have a system to help us monitor pupils’ attendance levels and respond when pupils’ attendance is not good enough.
GREEN Band 96% to 100%
AMBER 1 Band 93% to 95.9%
AMBER 2 Band 90.1% to 92.9%
RED Band (PERSISTENT ABSENTEE) 90% or below (government definition).
