Saffron Green Primary School

Attendance

We aim to ensure that all children attend school regularly and on time wherever possible to ensure that they are able to make the most of the educational experiences offered at Saffron Green Primary School. We also aim to raise an awareness of the importance of attendance with our families and so to improve the level and profile of attendance. Any absence of a child’s schooling can seriously affect their learning. As a school, we will encourage parents and carers to ensure that their child achieves maximum possible attendance and that any problems that prevent this are identified and acted upon promptly.

Reporting absence

To ensure the safety and well being of all our pupils we now require you to inform the school office before 9:45am on the first day of your child’s absence. You can do this by using either our answer phone service, email or in person. If the school does not hear from you by 9:45am, we will now contact you by phone.

For your information:

Dedicated Absence Line Number is: 0208 953 3801 option 1.
Email address is admin@saffrongreen.herts.sch.uk

Authorised/unauthorised absence

Saffron Green Primary School aims to maximise attendance rates in order to ensure that all pupils are able to take the fullest advantage of the learning experiences available to them. Good attendance is essential for high achievement and outstanding learning.

Notification must be provided for all absences from school and the school will always follow this up. In most cases, absence is genuine and marked as authorised on the register.
The school operates a ‘1st day response’ policy. This means that if we have not been notified by 9:45am to tell us why a child is not coming to school that day we will contact his/her parents/carers.
Parents/carers must give specific reasons for absence – being ‘ill’ is not enough.
Parents/carers may be asked to provide evidence stating that their child is too ill to attend school.
Unless parents/carers have been given a particular time of absence through illness by a doctor they are expected to contact the school each day to let us know what is happening. The details of telephone calls are recorded and monitored.
Registers are monitored on a regular basis by our School Attendance Officer to look at patterns of absence, identify individuals or groups absences, attendance of siblings, etc. They may ask to see parents/carers if attendance is not satisfactory.
We would request that all medical appointments, if possible, are made after school.
If a medical appointment is known in advance parents/carers must notify the school in writing. If an emergency appointment is made please phone the school before 9am.
Notification must be given if a child needs to leave school during the day.

Term Time Holiday
NO leave of absence will be granted for family holidays during term time.
Parents may make an application for leave of absence for an exceptional circumstance
The Head Teacher will decide whether this application will be granted
The Head Teacher will decide the number of days granted for any leave of absence
Leave of absence taken without permission will be unauthorised
Saffron Green Primary School will decide what is deemed as an exceptional circumstance
A child can be removed from the school’s registers if they fail to return from a leave of absence where permission has been granted after both school and LA have tried to locate the pupil(s) or if there are 20 days continuous unauthorised absences and both the local authority and school have failed to locate the pupil.