Attendance

We understand that children can catch colds and illnesses - it's fine to send your child to school or nursery with a minor cough or common cold if they are otherwise well and do not have a high temperature. There are very few reasons why a pupil should not be in school and it is essential that you, as parents/carers, play your part in ensuring your child is in school on time every day.  The NHS has a useful guide to help parents decide whether a child is well enough to go to school, based on their symptoms. Is my child too ill for school?

Support and guidance on attendance is always available in school. If you have any questions about your child’s attendance or punctuality please contact our Attendance Team which is led by Mrs Appleton and Mrs Alves.

We like to celebrate good attendance at Gray’s on an individual, class and whole school basis throughout the school year. Some of the ways we do this are:

We take attendance seriously and we are always looking at ways to share attendance with our families, children and visitors to our school.

Gray's Farm expects all children to attend school every day that the school is open, in full school uniform, arriving on time, registering for the morning and afternoon sessions and remaining for the full school day. Only the school has the right to authorise an absence. The school will not do this if they believe that a child’s attainment is being significantly impaired by their level of attendance.

The Attendance Team carefully monitors the attendance of each child on a daily, weekly, monthly and termly basis. Parents will be notified by a text and/or letter from the school when attendance is less than 95% or a regular pattern of absence is noted. Attendance below 95% can have a significantly detrimental effect on your child’s attainment and potential to learn. Repeated days off mean your child is missing new learning and the opportunity to consolidate previous learning. This will result in gaps in their knowledge and skills and risks them falling significantly behind their peers and not attaining the age related expectations.

Parents and carers have a legal duty to ensure your child gets a full time-education.  Schools have to regularly inform the Local Authority of any pupils who are regularly absent from school, have irregular attendance, or have missed 10 school days or more without the school’s permission. As part of the school attendance policy, referrals will be made to the local authority (Bromley) Education Welfare Officer, where there are concerns about a child’s attendance which has not been resolved by the school and/or when the school believes that the child’s attainment is significantly impaired by their level of attendance.

Please note, as stated in our Attendance policy, we are not permitted to authorise Holidays during term time and as such these will not be authorised. Any period of leave taken without the authorisation of the school, or in excess of that agreed, will be classed as unauthorised and will be referred to the Local Authority to issue a Fixed Penalty Notice fine. Please note that the school does not receive the money from this fine.

At Gray’s Farm we have a soft start in the morning; with classroom doors opening at 8:40am and closing ready for registers to be taken at 8:55am. Ensuring your child arrives at school on time and ready to learn is fundamental and consequently helps them get the most out of their school day and learning. Arriving late to school can unsettle a child and could mean they are missing out on valuable learning time. If you do, however, arrive after 9:25am, this will go down as an unauthorised absence and will negatively impact your child’s attendance.