At St Anne’s Infants’ School our aim is for outstanding attendance for every child. Year on year we see the relationship between high attendance and children being settled, happy and making good progress. Absenteeism will affect your child’s confidence and ability to understand what is being taught in their lessons. It can also have a huge impact on their relationships with their peers.

It is our responsibility to ensure that we actively promote and encourage outstanding school attendance for all of our children. We want to do everything in our power to encourage high levels of attendance as we know that this will positively impact on your child’s academic progress and will also contribute to their personal, social and emotional wellbeing in school; this is an important focus of ours at St Anne’s Infants. We expect your child to have attendance as close as possible to 100%, with our school attendance target being 96%. We will work closely with you to improve attendance when it falls short of this target and the Attendance Officer’s role is to work with families to achieve this.

As a parent or guardian it is your responsibility to contact the school as early as possible on each and every day of school absence. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept messages from grandparents or other family members/friends. This helps us to ensure that every absent child is safe and accounted for. Please call the school office on 0117 9031435 where you can talk to a member of the office staff or leave a message on the answer phone. It is crucial that we have details for at least four contacts for your child. If a child is absent and we have been unable to speak to any of the contact numbers, a home visit will be made.

Illnesses are inevitable and unavoidable but this should be the only reason a child is absent from school and our attendance target allows for this. We monitor for patterns of illness and for repeated illnesses, and where this is the case we will work with you to try and improve your child’s health but please be aware we may need to request evidence of illness if it is a recurrent issue. If you are unsure of whether to keep your child at home or not, please refer to this useful advice from the NHS.

In order to achieve the highest possible levels of attendance for your son/daughter we request that routine medical appointments are taken outside of school hours or during the school holidays. Where this is unavoidable, please endeavour to ensure that your child does not miss an entire school day and provide an appointment card in respect of the absence. Whole day absences regarding medical appointments will only be authorised in exceptional circumstances.

St Anne’s Infants has a robust policy regarding holidays taken in term time. Only in very exceptional circumstances will such a holiday be authorised. Parents/carers who take their children on holiday without the permission of the school may be issued with a Penalty Notice. Please ensure that you request permission prior to the absence and at least four weeks in advance.

To request permission for a leave of absence, please follow the link to 'Parent Forms' below.

Full information regarding St Anne’s Infants’ Attendance Policy can be found by clicking this link Please do not hesitate to contact our Attendance Officer if you would like to discuss any issues which may affect your child’s attendance.