Formal Attendance Policy Letter

FORMAL ATTENDANCE POLICY LETTER Date: Dear , I am writing to outline 's attendance policy and the legal requirements regarding school attendance. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LEGAL REQUIREMENTS Under the Education Act 1996, parents have a legal duty to ensure their child attends school regularly. Key requirements: • All children aged 5-16 must receive full-time education • Parents must ensure regular and punctual attendance • Schools must record attendance and report to the Local Authority • Persistent absence is defined as attendance below {{target_attendance}}% • The Local Authority can issue penalty notices or prosecute ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SCHOOL EXPECTATIONS At {{school_name}}, we expect: • Attendance of 95% or above for all students • Punctuality: students in class by 8:30 AM • All absences reported by 8:30 AM on the first day • Medical appointments arranged outside school hours where possible • Holiday requests made in advance using the formal request form • Medical evidence provided for any absence ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CONSEQUENCES OF POOR ATTENDANCE Persistent absence may result in: • Attendance threshold warning letter • Parent meeting with Head of Year • Referral to Education Welfare Service • Penalty notice (£60 per parent per child) • Prosecution in the Magistrates' Court • Final warning: possible de-registration We always prefer to work with families to address attendance issues before taking formal action. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SUPPORT MEASURES We recognise that some attendance issues have underlying causes. Support is available: • Mentoring and pastoral support • Breakfast club for students who arrive late • Home visits from attendance officers • Referral to external agencies • Flexible learning plans for medical needs • Counselling services Please contact us if you need help — we want every student to succeed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ We are committed to working with all families to ensure every student receives the education they deserve. Please contact the school office if you have any concerns about your child's attendance. Yours sincerely, Principal