To achieve our school values of 'Enjoy, Achieve...Flourish' and in order to establish excellent lifelong learning habits excellent attendance at primary school is essential.

Excellent school attendance helps children learn and achieve and for this reason Hampsthwaite is committed to ensuring children attend well.

It is important that parents and families share and support our understanding of the importance of good attendance as well as our expectations and the reasons for them.

Recognising Good and Outstanding Attendance

Through our newsletters we share and celebrate the numbers of  children achieving good and outstanding attendance. We write every term to families where excellent levels of attendance have been achieved and where attendance and/or punctuality has improved. 

Persistent Absenteeism

Persistent absenteeism is classed as attendance below 90% in a school year. We closely monitor attendance records and will write to parents if their child is at risk of or is classed as persistently absent. We will work closely with families to support them in ensuring children improve their attendance record. A school benchmark we set for ourselves is 97%. 

Absence due to Illness

If your child is unwell please keep him/her at home. A child who is unwell is not going to be able to work and enjoy school!

The Local Education Authority advice about medicine at school is that “where practicable parents should accept the administration of medicines as their responsibility and not something they should seek to refer to school”. Children with acute infections should not normally return to school until the treatment is complete and the child recovered. Sometimes a child appears to have recovered before the medicine is finished, then it is usually possible to arrange the dosage schedule so that medication does not need to be given at school.

If your doctor advises you that your child is well enough to return to school before the medication is finished and that it is necessary to have the medicine at lunch time, please bring the medicine correctly labelled to the main office. A form should be completed at the school office giving staff permission to administer the medicine.

The medicine should be brought to school in a properly labelled container with the name of the prescribing person (G.P.), the name and address of the child, the name of the medicine and the dosage. No medicine should be brought to school by a child. The administration of non prescribed medicine is not possible.

Medicine may be administered at school for long term illnesses (i.e. asthma, diabetes, epilepsy). If your child uses an inhaler him/herself please inform the class teacher in writing of the instructions your child has been given. Assistance may be given if necessary.

We would ask the parents to come to school to bring and administer the medicine at lunchtime themselves:

• if the medicine is dangerous

• if the timing and nature of administration are of vital importance

• where serious consequences could result if the teacher forgets to administer the dose

• where the medicine has to be kept under special conditions

• where technical or medical knowledge or expertise is required.

Absence of Leave Requests

We strongly encourage children to attend school every day of the school year. We recognise that very occasionally there may be exceptional circumstances for which parents need to apply for absence of leave during term time.

Please note – no parent can demand leave of absence as a right.

Regulations state that applications must be made in advance and will only be authorised in exceptional (examples of exceptional circumstances are given on the request form) circumstances. Absence of leave requests apply to all children registered at the school even if they are not yet of statutory school age (5 years old).

If you need to make a request please collect a Leave of Absence form from the Main Office and submit it as far in advance as possible and at least 6 weeks before the first date of the requested leave.

Following submission of requests forms we will write back to parents with a decision.

Please note it is not possible to replicate the work children will miss in other forms as the children will miss the direct teaching. Teachers and support staff will do their level best to support children upon their return but please be aware all absence disrupts the learning process and impacts on the continuity of education.

Please see our Attendance Policy, located here, for further details. 

The NYCC rights and responsibilities documents outlines parents rights and responsibilities in relation to attendance. It explains the possible outcomes of poor attendance for children and parents. It highlights that schools can contact the LA to request the issue of a Penalty Notice, if there have been at least 10 sessions (five days) of unauthorised absence in the preceding four months. An accompanying FAQ document answers the most common questions regarding penalty notices and other aspects of attendance.