External classroom doors open at 8.40am and a member of staff will be there to greet the children. Registers are taken at 8.50am; children arriving in class after this time receive a late mark on the register. Children arriving after the registers have closed at 9.15am receive an unauthorised late mark.

If your child arrives at school after the classroom door has closed, he/she must be accompanied by an adult and enter via the school office, where he/she will need to be signed in and their school meal requirements confirmed.

Please ensure that you notify the school office if your child is absent from school; this can be done via email or by leaving an answer machine message. Please do not leave messages with teaching staff or teaching assistants as they are busy preparing for the class and are often unable to pass the message to the school office. Please telephone the school on each subsequent day of the child's absence.

Office staff will make contact with parents (via text message or phone call) if we have not had absence information by 9.15am. 

Parents are encouraged to make routine medical appointments, i.e. GP or Dentist, outside of school hours.  When this is not possible, please provide evidence of the appointment by letter / appointment card / email / text. A screen shot (forwarded to the school office) can be used if you do not have a paper copy.

Our target for every pupil is that over the whole year they achieve 97% attendance, which is no more than 5 days absent in an academic year. The Government's national expectation is 96%, the equivalent of 7 days absence in a year. The following table shows the number of days off for each equivalent %.

You are required under the Education Act (1996) to ensure your child attends school regularly. If your child accrues 10 consecutive sessions of unauthorised absence, you may be liable for a penalty notice (one day's absence equals two sessions and a five day absence is equal to 10 sessions).

An unauthorised absence is any absence that the Headteacher has not given permission for or where an explanation has not been provided by the parents. There are times when absences can be authorised, in exceptional circumstances.  Exceptional circumstances include, for example, occasions where the timing of an event is outside of your control, such as a family wedding or funeral.  Exceptional circumstances are events that are not going to occur again.  In the overwhelming majority of cases, family holidays do not meet this criteria.

Parents must complete a request for absence from school in exceptional circumstances form and submit this to the school, allowing for sufficient time to enable the school to consider the request and inform parents of the decision.

Where parents do not follow the school’s procedures of submitting a request and simply remove their child without seeking prior approval, a warning may not be given and you may be liable for a penalty notice.

If your request is declined or you do not follow the correct procedure and you still take your child out of school each parent within your household may be issued with a penalty notice. More information on penalty notices is available here.