Attendance

Regular attendance and punctuality at school is one of the biggest determining factors in a child's academic success and their personal and social development.

At Longsands, we support regular attendance by working with families to identify potential barriers and working together to overcome them. Pupils' attendance is regularly monitored so that support can be identified at the earliest opportunity.

If your child is absent from school, then you are required to phone in each and every day of their absence 01772 795676

Lateness – Not only does lateness make a bad start to the day, often meaning that children have missed crucial lesson input, arrival after 9:30am is recorded as a U (unauthorised) code and has a negative impact on your child’s attendance. All lateness/ attendance is monitored by Mrs Wilds.

Medical appointments – Medical/ dental appointments are recorded as an absence so still affect your child’s attendance record if they are not present for registration.  Please make medical appointments after school whenever possible.  

Requests of absence – You must complete a leave of absence form if you intend to take your child out of school, this should be completed and returned to the headteacher for consideration in advance. Due to the recent DFE changes, absences will only be authorised if there are exceptional circumstances, you should consider the impact on your child’s education before taking them out of school. Please see the new fixed penalty process, this is set down by the Department of Education and all school are required to adhere to it.

Warnings

In cases of unauthorised absence and persistent lateness, you will receive a Notice to Improve your child's attendance at school.  This will include a copy of your child's attendance details. If the required improvement is not made, a penalty notice may be issued or you may be prosecuted.

In cases of unauthorised leave, no Notice to Improve will be sent before a penalty notice is issued or prosecution proceedings.  

Criteria for penalty notices

Penalty notices may be used in respect of unauthorised absences. It is the school's decision whether to authorise a pupil's absence.

Schools are required by law to consider requesting a penalty notice where a pupil has 10 sessions (which is the equivalent of 5 days) of unauthorised absence in a rolling 10-school week period.

A penalty notice is an alternative to prosecution. Where parents/carers pay the fine they can avoid being prosecuted and receiving a criminal conviction.

The Department for Education guidance Working together to improve school attendance introduced a national framework for penalty notices alongside the amended penalty notice regulations which provides more guidance on when a penalty notice should be considered and the support that school should explore before resorting to a request for legal intervention.

View Lancashire County Council attendance information

View Longsands Attendance Policy

Download Term-Time Absence Request Form

DFE further information