Dear Parents & Carers,

As school finishes, I would just like to take the opportunity to say ‘Thank you’ to parents for all their support during the inspection this week. As you can imagine it was frantic in school, especially with Year 6 away on transition, sports afternoons, educational visits, not to mention it being the last week of the academic year. However, all the children and especially Year 5 animated the ethos of our school welcoming all: come as you are. . . His Majesty’s Inspector, who led our inspection, explained that the report will not be issued to us until September due to the quality assurance process extending into school holidays.

New Attendance Guidance from 19th August, 2024

The Department for Education (DfE) have recently issued new statutory guidance for schools and local authorities: Working together to improve school attendance, which comes into force before the start of next term.

It explains that as a parent, you are legally responsible for making sure your child gets a suitable fulltime education, usually from the age of 5 to 16. For most parents, this will mean making sure your child is in school every day except when: 

  • Your child is too ill to go to school.
  • You have permission for a leave of absence from your child’s school for them not to attend. You should only ask for this in exceptional circumstances. Generally, a holiday would not be classed as an exceptional circumstance.
  • Your religious body has a day especially for religious observance.

While this is unchanged, there has been a significant hardening of attitude from the DfE with regard to unauthorised absence, as demonstrated by this paragraph, in the guidance:

If your child is absent from school without permission or a valid reason, you are likely to be breaking the law. Where this happens, your child’s school or your local council will speak to you to understand the reasons. If your child hasn’t attended because they are struggling to, both your child’s school and your local council are expected to put the right support in place to help you.

If you do not take part in that support, or it doesn’t work because more structured formal support is needed, then your child’s school or your local council may:

  • Invite you to agree to an attendance contract. This is a formal action plan that sets out what you will do to improve your child’s attendance and what your child’s school and/or your local council will do to support this.
  • Apply to the family court for an education supervision order to ensure you and your child receive advice, assistance and direction to make sure they receive a suitable full-time education.

If you do not make any efforts to improve your child’s attendance or it is clear you have knowingly allowed your child to be absent without good reason – for example, taking your child on holiday in school time without permission – your local council may prosecute you to protect your child’s right to a full-time education. Even during this process, you have the opportunity to accept and engage in voluntary support (such as an early help assessment) or formal support (such as an attendance contract or education supervision order) to prevent the case from going to court. If found guilty you may be given a parenting order, community order, a fine of up to £2,500 or in very exceptional circumstances a sentence of up to 3 months in prison.

Also, the guidance introduces much more stringent rules around the issuing of penalties, as demonstrated by this paragraph from the guidance:

From the 2024-25 school year, there will be new national rules on how penalty notices for school absence are used. The new rules mean that all schools must consider giving a penalty notice to a parent when a child has missed 10 or more sessions (5 days) for unauthorised reasons within a 10 school week period, and support to help your child be in school is not appropriate. If support would help improve attendance, that should be provided by the school or local council rather than a penalty notice. You cannot be given a penalty notice for absence that is authorised by the school (such as illness).

A penalty notice will usually only be issued in cases of holidays taken in school time, or for other reasons where the school or council is trying to help attendance to improve and you are not engaging in that support or it is not working and they believe that a penalty notice would improve attendance.

Your school or council can still decide to issue a penalty notice or proceed to prosecution for less amounts of absence than 10 sessions (5 days) if support is not appropriate and they think it would improve attendance. For example, if parents are often taking shorter holidays in school time to deliberately avoid a fine.

To read the complete statutory guidance, follow this link: https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2024/07/aaa-guide-for-parents-on-school-attendance-19th-Aug-version.pdf  

I am sorry my final newsletter of the year is mostly outlining a government document, but I felt it was important that you were made aware of the changes coming into effect in September.

On a much happier note, some of our children have composed a ‘Grace for the Holidays’ which they shared across school today and they hope you will make use of it during the break. Its message of sharing rest and relaxation and the joy of togetherness during the holidays, expresses much better the positive attitudes that children gain by attending school every day they can. I think all of the children are ready for a rest – not to mention the staff, who I can only commend for the way they faced inspection in the last week. The normal exhaustion staff feel at the end of a school year was put aside for those few days, but they more than deserve a holiday. Please continue to hold the children and staff in your prayers as we all look forward to trying our best once again from the beginning of September.

Yours sincerely,

John Hardy, Head Teacher