If your child is not in school, learning is not taking place.
If your child is absent, we ask you to telephone the school before 8:30am.
ATTENDANCE LINE: 0161 882 1197 or [email protected]
Attendance Team
Miss T Ingram - Lead Attendance Manager
Miss L McGuinness - Attendance Officer
Mrs M Ryder - Attendance Officer
The Attendance Team will regularly undertake home visits to support our students and families. These visits can be at any point during an absence and can also be unannounced. We appreciate your co-operation in reporting absences via our school’s procedure (above) and your understanding that home visits support our safeguarding procedures.
Please contact the team should you wish to discuss your child’s attendance or require any support.
At CHS South, we have a dedicated Attendance Team to ensure that poor attendance is not allowed to develop. We want all pupils to strive for 100% attendance. We are proud of our consistently improving attendance and attendance which is above local averages. We are pleased with our achievement in this area but are committed to improving attendance levels even further. Our attendance policy can be found here: https://www.chssouth.org.uk/about-us/key-policies.
CHS South follows Manchester’s Local Authority Attendance Strategy in order to reduce absence. CHS South attendance policy is available on the school website.
If there is something, we need to know regarding your child’s health which may impact on their attendance, please speak to the attendance team. We ask you to make every attempt to book non-urgent medical appointments after school or during the school holidays. Students with unavoidable medical and dental appointments during the school day are asked to bring in the appointment card in order to sign out of school at the appropriate time.
If you have concerns about your child’s attendance, you can contact the Attendance Team or your child’s Head of Year.
If we are concerned about a child’s attendance the following steps may be taken:
Pre-Warn Letter: This will be sent out if we see frequent and/or irregular patterns of absence. This is our way of alerting you to the fact that your child’s attendance is starting to become a concern. We may stop authorising your child’s absence without medical evidence.
Home Visit: Attendance staff & Safeguarding staff will visit the student at home when there is a concern for a child’s attendance, or if no contact has been made to state why the child is absent from school. These can be unannounced.
Penalty Warning Letter: This will be sent out when a child has unauthorised absences. Once this letter has been sent, absences cannot be authorised without a doctor’s note to state that your child is unfit for school. If your child is absent for a medical appointment, we require the letter or appointment card in order to authorise this absence.
Early Help Assessment (EHA): We may offer to support your child’s attendance by putting an EHA into place, this allows us to draw in agency support should we need it.
Penalty Notice/Prosecution: If your child’s attendance does not improve following any or all the above interventions, the Local Authority may choose to issue parents with a Penalty Notice or prosecute for their children’s non-attendance at school.
LATENESS
What happens when students are late?
Students sign in at Student Services or with Attendance staff, they are given a behaviour point and may be given a detention by their Head of Year.
Persistent lateness will be followed up by the Pastoral staff and the Attendance Team.
Students may also be invited to attend a Punctuality Panel.
For repeated late arrivals parents could receive a Penalty Warning Letter or a Penalty Notice from the Local Authority. Please contact the attendance team if you have concerns.
IMPACT OF MEDICAL APPOINTMENTS ON ATTENDANCE
A number of parents have contacted us recently concerned that their child’s attendance at medical appointments has a negative impact on their attendance. Even when a student’s absence is authorised, this is still an absence and must be recorded as such. Where it is possible, we ask that non-urgent appointments are made out of school hours. If a student has a morning appointment, they should attend school as soon as possible and receive their afternoon mark. If a student has a mid-morning appointment, they should come into school for registration, sign out in time for their appointment and then come back for the rest of the school day. Unavoidable afternoon appointments should be made for after 2pm where possible. Appointment cards or letters should be shown to the school for all medical appointments. If you have any questions/concerns about medical appointments, please contact the Attendance Team or you child’s Head of Year.
LEAVE OF ABSENCE
The Department for Education regulations state that Headteachers may not grant any leave of absence during term time unless there are exceptional circumstances. If exceptional circumstances arise you must take the following steps:
- Apply in writing as soon as possible to the Headteacher/Miss. Ingram stating the reason for absence and the duration of leave requested.
- The Headteacher/Miss. Ingram will respond in writing to your request.
- Must be done in advance of the leave of absence.
- If leave of absence is denied and you take your child/children out of school, the absence will be unauthorised. This may result in the following legal action being taken against you - under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 an authorised officer of the City Council has the power to issue each parent/carer with a Penalty Notice for each of their children who fail to attend school regularly.
- Penalty Notices issued for unauthorised absences on or after 1st September 2013 incur a fine of £120 to be paid within 28 days, which is reduced to £60 if paid within 21 day of the notice being served. Failure to pay a Penalty Notice may result in a prosecution.
- It is widely recognised that the educational outcomes and future life chances of children and young people can be significantly impacted upon by periods of absence. We thank you for supporting us in ensuring that your son/daughter attends school, on time, every day.
ABSENCE FOR RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE
Please note, we will only ever authorise 1 day’s absence for religious observance during term time.
Attendance Policy
