Attendance
Attendance at school is important for a child's future and educational outcomes. Regular attendance enables children to access all available opportunities and reach their full potential.
Taking your child out of school during the term may harm your child's academic progress.
Schools count each day as 2 sessions - morning and afternoon. Your child has to attend 10 full sessions each week to achieve 100% attendance.
Absences may only be authorised at the discretion of the Head Teacher. Applications must be made well in advance on a request from, which can be obtained from the school office.
schooloffice@urchfont.equamead.org
Monitoring Attendance
The Head Teacher monitors lateness and absence in the school. This means that the Head Teacher and admin team will look for patterns in absence and for low attendance over time. If a child's attendance drops below 95% we will work with parents to improve attendance. If attendance does not improve, we are under an obligation to discuss our concerns with the education welfare officer. We do understand that there are always exceptions to the rule and no-one can help getting ill, but we want to be sure that all children absent from school have valid reasons.
Fixed Penalty Notices
Where a pupil reaches the national threshold of 10 sessions of unauthorised absence in a rolling period of 10 weeks, the school will consider whether a penalty notice is appropriate. Each case will be considered individually to determine whether a penalty notice should be used to improve attendance. This includes unauthorised holiday of 10 sessions or more.
Penalty notices for unauthorised absence will be charged by the LEA at £160, reduced to £80 if paid within 21 days. This is per parent per child.
Please let us know if your child is absent due to illness
Please contact the school before 9am if your child is going to be absent due to illness.
There is an answerphone service, or you can email the school office. schooloffice@urchont.equamead.org
Please leave a rough indication of when you expect your child to return to school. If as a result of illness your child has suffered from vomiting or diarrhoea, you should keep them at home for 48hours after the last episode. This will help to ensure that the illness does not spread throughout the school.
Please follow this link to view the EQUA Mead Attendance and Absence Policy: