St Anthony's Catholic Primary School
Attendance
Regular attendance at school means that your child can make the most of their education and improve their chances in adult life. School can also help your child’s social skills such as making and developing friendships. A regular and punctual attendance pattern will help your child feel settled at school, give them the full educational experience that we offer and, most importantly, enable them to reach their full potential.
The link between attendance and attainment in school is clear. The more a pupil is in school the more they increase their opportunity to fulfil their potential.
Helping children to create a pattern of regular attendance is everybody’s responsibility - parents and carers, pupils, and all members of school staff. If you, for whatever reason, are struggling with your child's school attendance please contact Mrs Edwards.
Leave of Absence Request
A Leave of Absence is any time that a child has away from school that is not due to illness. This includes holidays, religious observance or time away to take part in additional sporting or performing opportunities. As part of the national drive to raise attendance, there has been an important change to the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006. The word 'holiday' has been removed. There is no entitlement to holidays during term time and such absences can only be authorised in a restricted number of 'special circumstances'. The wording of the amendments now uses the phrase exceptional circumstance and Local Authorities will be closely monitoring those schools who have a high number of authorised absences for the purpose of family holidays.
We work closely with the Local Authority to monitor our attendance, sharing information about poor attendees and unauthorised absences.
The following summarises our leave of absence regulations:
- A Leave of Absence can only be granted by the Headteacher.
- The Headteacher will only grant a Leave of Absence where there are exceptional circumstances.
- The Headteacher will determine whether the leave of absence will be granted or not.
- When requesting a Leave of Absence, parents /carers are asked to make clear how the circumstances leading to the request are exceptional.
- A Leave of Absence must be requested in advance; a minimum of two weeks is expected.
- Where a leave of absence is not granted, the absence will be coded as unauthorised.
There is an application form for a Leave of Absence which can be obtained from the main school office.
Each Leave of Absence will be considered on a case-by-case basis and on its own merit. We greatly appreciate parental support to reduce the total amount of days lost due to family holidays. We are committed to working in partnership with you to enable your child to achieve their potential and to support their social development.