Attendance

We wish to work in partnership with parents and carers and seek your full support in ensuring that your child attends the academy every day, on time.

The Academy Day  

A bell will sound at 8.40am each morning to indicate that students must start to go to registration with their tutor. Registration time is between 8.40am and 9.00am. Any student arriving to registration after 8.40 will be marked late. School gates shut at 8.40am, after which all access is via Reception.

School Day Timings

For Term Time Dates click here

The target attendance figure for all students is 100%.

Attendance - Meridian Trust

Attendance Records Monitoring

There may be times when your child is unable to come to school due to illness however, some types of illness do not require absence from school, unless of course, your child is feeling too unwell to attend. Guidance on when to keep your child away from school can be found below:

Children and young people settings: tools and resources – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Is my child too ill for school? – NHS (www.nhs.uk)

If you need to contact your child’s House Team, please contact them via the phone numbers/emails below:

School Contacts

What are the laws around school attendance?

Statutory Guidance from the Department for Education (DfE) called Working Together to Improve School Attendance came into force on 19th August 2024 underpinned with new legislation The School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024.

The new guidance gives clear responsibilities to ‘everyone’ involved in the care of a child and clearly connects that absence from school is classed as a safeguarding concern in terms of ensuring the whereabouts of every child is concerned and in exploring absence when the level of attendance is of concern.

It also reinforces the duties of both schools and parents in respect of attendance which are outlined in The Education Act 1996. All children who are of compulsory school age (from the start of the term after they turn 5 years old, until the last Friday in June of their 16th year) must receive an education at school or otherwise. A child’s parent(s) (or carer(s)) is responsible for ensuring this happens under this act and where a child is over compulsory school age the parent(s)/carer(s) have a duty to encourage their participation in education or training up to the age of 18 under Part 1 of Education and Skills Act 2008. Where a parent/carer fails to ensure a child receives education, s444 of the above act states they may have committed an offence.

There are a number of important steps that you can take as parents and carers to ensure your child maintains a high level of attendance

• Ensure your child attends every day, on time, equipped and ready to learn.
• Ensure the school has up to date addresses and telephone numbers. We will contact you by email or by telephone if your child is absent and you have not contacted us.
• If your child is ill, contact the school every day your child is absent and provide an explanatory note on their return. Contacts for the house offices are listed at the bottom of this page.
• If no contact is received regarding an absence, it is recorded as unauthorised. Ultimately the academy is responsible for deciding if the absence is authorised or not. (For your information, a Penalty Notice may be issued in relation to a child whose attendance at school is less than 90% including unauthorised absences over a given period and a range of interventions have been implemented by the College to raise the attendance.)
• Only genuine absence will be authorised. You will be asked to provide medical certificates and/or proof of medication if your child has a poor attendance record.
• Ensure that medical appointments are made outside of academy time as far as possible.
• Respond to academy letters or telephone calls regarding attendance and punctuality.
• Contact your child’s tutor if you are experiencing difficulty in getting your child into the academy.

The DfE has confirmed that:

• If a student has an attendance level above 90% this is not regarded as ‘regular’ attendance. Schools/academies should not set a minimum attendance target as 100% should be expected.
• Legislation requires us to take legal action against parents/carers who fail to ensure their child attends school at a level of 90% and below, overall/accumulative, or for a specific period, g. 90% overall = 19 days of absence throughout the year.
• As set out in the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006 amended in 2013 – that headteachers continue to have the power to authorise leave of absence, but only in exceptional or unavoidable circumstances and each case should be considered on its own merits.
• Family holidays are not allowed to be taken during school term time.  While family holidays are enriching experiences, the school year is designed to give families the opportunity for these breaks without having to disrupt their children’s education. It is for schools to consider the specific details and relevant context behind each request. Schools know their students best and are well placed to make those judgements.
• (For your information, guidance states that ‘any parent who takes a child out of school for term time leave for 6 consecutive sessions (3 days) or more over a 4 week period, not authorised by the school (under the exceptional circumstances rule), may receive a Penalty Notice. Therefore, Penalty Notices will be issued for single event absences of at least 3 consecutive school days or more where these absences are unauthorised because they are neither exceptional nor unavoidable.’)

This academy, and all other Meridian academies, continue to support Local Authorities (LA) with improving attendance by using sanctions for absences which fall into the above criteria.  This is under the powers of Section 23 of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 and are issued under The Education (Penalty Notices) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2007 & amendments 2012, 2013 & 2024.

• A Penalty Notice, resulting in the requirement to pay an instant penalty up to £160 per child, per parent. Failure to pay will result in prosecution before Magistrates Court.
• Prosecution under Section 444(1) Education Act 1996, where if convicted you may be fined up to £1,000.
• Prosecution under Section 444(1a) Education Act 1996 where if convicted you may be fined up to £2,500 and/or a custodial sentence.

We felt it would be useful for you to have the above information to assist you to make good choices in respect of your child’s absences from school.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank you in anticipation of your support to improve our student’s attendance levels and progress.

Holidays and Authorised Exceptional Absence from School

As set out in The School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024, headteachers continue to have the power to authorise leave of absence, but only when requested in advance and for exceptional circumstances; each case should be considered on its own merits. It is for schools to consider the specific details and relevant context behind each request. If the absence reaches the national threshold of 10 unauthorised sessions of absence in a rolling 10 school weeks a legal sanction can automatically be considered. See below Penalty Notices and Legal Sanctions Section.

NB. To clarify, the ‘10 weeks’ is not fixed, and is a trigger period for schools to identify if there may be a concern with attendance. Any legal action that is subsequently taken may be for a longer period if addressing multiple absences but it may be shorter if dealing with a specific single period of absence of 10 sessions or more e.g. for an unauthorised holiday of 1 week.

The 10 sessions can be made up of any combination of unauthorised absence, examples of this are:

• 4 sessions of ‘holiday’ taken in term time plus 6 sessions of arriving late after the register has closed (U codes) within a 10-week period.
• 10 sessions within one week or spanning over the end/start of 2 weeks.
• 6 sessions of ‘holiday’ in week 1 followed by 4 sessions of absence on subsequent weeks.
• 4 sessions at the end of one half-term or term, followed by 6 sessions at the start of the next half-term or term. Terms can also be in different academic years.
• 10 sessions taken as individual or consecutive days over a number of weeks but within a 10-week period.

An absence is classified as unauthorised when a child is away from school without the permission of the school. To request any leave during term time a Term Time Exceptional Absence Request Form needs to be completed in advance (we ask for 3-weeks to allow for full consideration and response). You may add an additional letter and/or documentations with the form, if you feel more information will support your request.

Further details about government policy and advice on this matter is available here