Attendance

The law requires parents to make sure their children receive a full-time education suitable to their needs. For most children this means attending school regularly. As a last resort, schools and local authorities have legal powers to deal with poor attendance.

School attendance at Grasmere

All children are expect to attend school regularly and on time.

The key to a child’s success in school is regular and punctual attendance. If a child has an attendance rate less than 85 – 90% they will not make progress appropriate to their ability. This is not fair on the child.

At Grasmere children are expected to be in school and on time every day! Just one child coming in to lessons late affects the whole class.

If your child for any reason is absent from school you must inform the school by telephone 0207 254 4564 on every day that your child will be absent. If your child does not attend school and we do not receive a phone call the office will ring you to ensure that your child is safe.

If your child is going to be absent for a long period you must notify the school as any unauthorised absences will be investigated by the schools attendance officer.

If you are not sure how long your child should be off school please view our Absence and Illness information page.

Absence requests

The law does not grant parents an automatic right to take their child out of school during term time. Any absence from school will disrupt your child’s learning. You may consider that a holiday will be educational but your child will still miss out on the teaching that their class-­mates will receive during your holiday.

Children returning from a term time holiday are also unprepared for the lessons which build on the teaching they have missed. Teachers then have to give more time to help individual children catch up on missed work. This poses a potential risk of the under achievement of other students in the class. This is something we all have a responsibility to avoid.

The Department for Education allows a Head Teacher the discretion to consider authorising a holiday in term time only in “exceptional circumstances”. If you consider that your request for a holiday is exceptional you will need to complete this form:

Request for Absence During Term Time

A response will be sent to you as soon as possible. If the holiday is not considered to be an exceptional circumstance, and you nevertheless take your child out of school for the holiday, the absence will be recorded as unauthorised.

In the case of an unauthorised holiday the Hackney Learning Trust Behaviour & Attendance Service will be notified of the holiday taken and a Penalty Notice will be issued. Please note that such a Penalty is issued to each parent for each child taken out of school. A Penalty Notice is a fine of £60 which increases to £120 if not paid within the first 28 days. Thereafter, the Penalty remains unpaid this may result in legal action. The lead Attendance Officer at the Hackney Learning Trust is Tara Scott. She can be contacted on 0208 820 7274. All holiday requests must be completed on the form above, letters will not be accepted. This should be returned to the school at least 14 days before the start of the holiday.

Please note that authorised absences are when a child is absent due to long-lasting illness or family circumstances and the Headteacher has given permission, otherwise they are documented as unauthorised.

Any requests for a child to be absent during term time, parents must fill in an absent request form, which should be given to the office two weeks in advance. When a absence is authorised by the Headteacher you will be given feedback giving permission for the absence (an “authorised absence”), or feedback explaining why the request is not being authorised