Formal Attendance Policy Letter
A formal letter to parents outlining the school's attendance policy, legal requirements, consequences of poor attendance, and support measures available to families.
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Greenwood International School FORMAL ATTENDANCE POLICY LETTER Date: 2026-09-01 Dear James Thompson, I am writing to outline Greenwood International School'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 0% • The Local Authority can issue penalty notices or prosecute ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SCHOOL EXPECTATIONS At Greenwood International School, 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, Dr. Robert Williams Principal Greenwood International School
About This Template
The full attendance letter: expectations, thresholds, reporting routes, penalty notice warnings and support available, issued as the school's formal policy communication.
Everything runs in your browser — your school details are sent only when you choose Send. Export the finished document as an A4 or Letter PDF.
Topics this template covers: attendance policy · formal letter · legal notice · attendance requirements
How to Use This Template
Enter Target Attendance % as your published expectation (96% is common, 90% the persistent-absence line), then quote Legal Requirements accurately for your jurisdiction so the letter cannot be picked apart.
Fill School Expectations (registration times, reporting procedures) and Consequences of Poor Attendance including penalty-notice thresholds where they apply, balanced with Support Measures — early help, medical referrals, flexible timetables. Sign with Principal Name, send to all families at the year's start, and reference the same wording in every subsequent attendance letter for consistency.
When to Use This Template
Rolling out a new policy
Draft the expectations and consequences, set an effective date, and send the same formatted document to staff and parents so nobody is working from an older version.
Annual policy review
Pull the last version, update the review date and any changed wording, and reissue with a visible revision trail.
Collecting staff acknowledgment
Issue the policy with a signature or acknowledgment section so every member of staff confirms they have read and understood the current version before the effective date.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Based on our guide
Attendance Policy Compliance: How to Track and Report Student Attendance
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