Attendance

Why is it important to attend school

At GWA we aim for our whole school attendance of 97%. Encouraging your child to attend school everyday is one of the most important ways you can support your child in their education. Being in school means we can support your child to build those all-important relationships which often encourage students to feel they belong and want to come to school. If they are in school our staff can help them to progress and develop their knowledge and understanding, whilst removing any barriers they may be facing.

If you want to talk to someone about your child’s attendance or are worried that there are barriers to them attending school, please do get in touch, by emailing attendance@gwacademy.co.uk. We are here to listen and help.

Is 90% good?

We aim for 97% minimum at GWA and each year we have many students who reach this percentage and are celebrated for this amazing achievement.

In a school year if a student has 90% attendance it means that they have missed 19 days, which is 114 lessons missed, which is difficult to catch up. As such, we would urge you to send you child in even if they are feeling a little unwell. We often find that once they are at school, they feel better. However, if they still feel unwell once in school we will contact you to come and collect them. You can monitor your child's attendance by downloading the Studybugs app. Parents can use this to quickly report their child's absences and monitor their attendance.

Medication - We can administer pain relief should your child require it. Medicines should be in their original box and Medical Form filled out and handed to reception

Download medical form - Parental agreement to administer Medication form

How do we support students to come into school?

We recognise that for some, school can be tricky and attending everyday a real challenge. If you are concerned about your child's attendance or their feelings towards school, please do reach out and contact us. We are here to help and want to work together to support and remove any barriers they may be experiencing. We will email you when we feel a discussion would be beneficial due to falling attendance and similarly when we recognise that their attendance has improved.

Please email: attendance@gwacademy.co.uk with your child's name and tutor group in the subject line and address it for the attention of the Head of Year and we will be in touch within 72 hours.

Our Attendance Officer monitors attendance on a daily basis: makes absence calls, checks in late students, ensures register completion and works with students and families where attendance is falling. She also authorises appointments and where necessary will undertake the legal aspects of unauthorised attendance as set out here .

If a student's attendance begins to fall below:

95% - 9 days absence over a year (54 lessons missed)

Tutors will check in with students and discuss any barriers they are facing

93% - 13 days absence over a year (78 lessons missed)

HOY will check in and discuss barriers and discuss with parents next steps

90% - (19 days absence over a year (114 lessons missed) this is classed by the government as persistent absenteeism)

The Assistant Principal for the Key Stage will meet with parents to develop an action plan. This will be closely monitored and if we feel extra support is required, we will seek support from external agencies.

Should a student's attendance drop below 50% they are classed as severely absent students and support from external professionals such as the Educational Welfare Officer will be sought, to explore what further support is required.

How do I report a student’s absence?

Ensuring your child has attendance above 95% is the best way you can support your child in their academic attainment. Before reporting their absence, please encourage them to get up and have something to eat, this often helps them to feel well enough to come in.

Appointments - Please try where possible to organise appointments outside of school hours. Should this not be possible please email in the appointment details and screenshot of the email / letter to: attendance@gwacademy.co.uk prior to the appointment, so we can ensure our registers are coded correctly and that students are not marked as an unauthorised absence.

If they are unwell enough to get up and come to school, please do the following before 8.30am. All student absences MUST be reported each day they are absent, by no later than 8:30am.

Studybugs - Our preferred way for you to report absences is by using Studybugs. You can download the app for free and use this to report your child's absences each day they are absent and monitor their attendance.

Email - attendance@gwacademy.co.uk - Please include your child’s name, tutor group and reason for illness. You must do this for each day of their absence.

Phone - 01793 209 700 and then choose option 1 to report an absence. Please leave the child’s name, tutor group and reason for illness. You must do this for each day of their absence.

What happens if your child is late to school?

All pupils should:

Arrive by 8:25am each day, registration and our planned tutor sessions begin at 8.30am.
Gates close at 8:30am, anyone arriving after this time will be issued with a sanction in line with our behaviour policy.
Morning registers close at 8:50am, any child who arrives after registration closes is marked as U (unauthorised absence) in the register for the morning session, which will count as a half day absence on your child's record.

Please be aware that Government guidance now suggests that schools should consider issuing a fine if a pupil misses 10 sessions (morning or afternoon registration – one day off = 2 sessions) of unauthorised absence in a rolling period of 10 school weeks. So if your child is absent for 3 days (6 sessions) and is late 4 times in a 10 week period, this could trigger a fine.

What happens if you know your child will be absent during term time?

Please be aware that all requests for absence during term time are overseen by the Principal or Vice Principal. National guidance requires us to reject most requests as student attendance is a national focus and priority.

Current legislation does not allow any absence due to holiday during term time unless there are extreme extenuating circumstances, when it will be at the discretion of the Principal or Vice Principal. Any parent wishing to request a leave of absence in extenuating circumstances will need to apply through this Student absence form.

Please note that requesting a leave of absence does not mean that the absence will be authorised. Our default is that absence requests will be unauthorised and requests for absence rejected unless there are exceptional circumstances. Should you still wish to request an absence parents / carers should submit the Student absence form.

If a parent/guardian takes a student out of school on holiday during term time and that absence is unauthorised, the school will request a Penalty Notice be issued by the local authority.

What the attendance percentages mean?

We would all feel pleased with ourselves if we scored 90% in a test. However, 90% attendance means your child misses 114 lessons each year. Over the course of your child’s five years at GWA, that adds up to 570 lessons, that’s a significant amount of learning missed and research shows that this significantly impacts academic attainment

Links between good attendance and academic attainment

To give your child, the best chance in life, they need to achieve a good set of GCSE results. The table below shows the impact of poor attendance on likely GCSE outcomes, the lower your child’s attendance, the less chance they have of passing 5 GCSEs.

At a minimum, your child will need to achieve 5 GCSEs Grade 9-4 to progress to Post 16 otherwise they may end up having to re-take some qualifications, in particular English and Maths GCSE

How can you help your child improve their attendance?

Please do come and speak with us if you are concerned about your child’s attendance, we are here to help. Below are some common reasons for poor attendance which may help

Illness - Does your child often say they feel unwell first thing in the morning?

Students should only be missing school if they are really unwell and would not be able to get out of bed at any point during the day. For colds, headaches, sore throats, tummy ache/period pains etc students should get up and dressed in their uniform, have breakfast and try to come to school.

When we are ill, we often feel at our worst in the morning. It is always much better to go into school and see how you go. It is difficult for us to authorise a whole day for these kinds of absences. We can administer pain relief should your child require it. Medicines should be in their original box and Medical

Form filled out and handed to reception

Download medical form - Parental agreement to administer Medication form

You can also give your consent for the school to administer paracetamol via MCAS

Tiredness

Does your child have access to screens late into the evening. This can affect their sleep.

Is your child getting the recommended number of hours of sleep each night?

Is it good quality?

The Sleep Foundation - Has some useful areas of support on ‘how to improve your sleep quality’. Could you agree to put in place 3 of these actions as a family to support better sleep?

Do you think your child is avoiding school for some reason?

Below are some questions you can ask your child to try and work out what the problem might be:

Are there any subjects where you feel behind?
Are there any lessons that you really don’t look forward to? Why is this? How can I help?
Which teachers do you have good relationships with?
How do you find breaktime/ lunchtime? (food/ friends/ activity etc)
Are there any friendship issues/ concerns about interactions with other students in your classes?
If you could change one thing about your time in school that would make you more likely to go to school every day, what would it be?

You can contact the school in the following ways to tell us about any concerns you have/ your child has, and we will work with you to try and resolve them.

Email us  on attendance@gwacademy.co.uk or email your child’s tutor or Head of Year