Attendance

“Improving attendance is everyone’s business. The barriers to accessing education are wide and complex, both within and beyond the school gates, and are often specific to individual pupils and families. Good attendance begins with school being somewhere pupils want to be and therefore the foundation of securing good attendance is that school is a calm, orderly, safe, and supportive environment where all pupils are keen and ready to learn.” (DfE, Working together to improve school attendance, 2024)

Parents have a legal responsibility to ensure that children attend regularly and punctually, and that holidays in term time are avoided.

The school day starts at 8.45am and finishes at 2.45pm.

If your child is unwell, please contact the school office by 9.00am at the latest. The school admin team will contact all parents whose child does not arrive to school. Parents can also record absence through the Arbor app.

Attendance is monitored daily – where the school has not received a reason for absence, this will be followed up by a member of the Leadership and Management Team.

Children who attend school regularly benefit from school routines and strategies, which in turn, supports them in making positive progress.

The success of our children at Medina House depends on us all working together to support their education, and one of the ways that we can do this, is to promote access to and attendance at school.

Parents, carers and staff share the responsibility for supporting and promoting excellent school attendance and punctuality for all. It is our duty to consistently strive to achieve a goal of 100% attendance for all children. We do however understand that some of our children with complex medical needs may have more illness than their peers and as such will not be able to achieve 100% attendance. Where this is the case, the school will work in partnership with families to maximise learning opportunities and prioritise progress against appropriate individual outcomes.

Thank you for your help in our efforts to maximise children’s attendance and enable each child to benefit as much as possible from their placement at Medina House School.