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Hanover Primary School

Attendance

Being in school every day matters, and we take attendance very seriously at Hanover.

We aim to provide your child with the best education we can, every day they are in school. If your child is absent, we cannot teach them. The government has published research which shows a link between pupils’ attainment over time and their performance.. We have also added some leaflets below which show how important attendance is.

Punctuality

It is also really important that your child gets to school on time and ready to learn. School opens to children and their parents/carers at 8:50 each day, and children must be seated and ready to learn by 9:00 at the very latest. When children arrive late or in a rush, they find settling to their work much harder. They need to have had a good breakfast and a relaxed start – school is hard work.

Targets

We expect children to be in school 96% of the time or more. 96% attendance means missing no more than 7 days of school in a year. We believe this is more than enough to cover minor illness and most of our children do much better than 96%. Many of our children have 100% attendance, which is excellent!

Illness

We know that children fall ill and this may lead to a few days missed from school during a year. The document below, on Infection Control in Schools, gives a good guide on how long children should be kept of school for most common illnesses. If your child has a slight illness, do please bring them in. We are able to administer pharmacy as well as prescription medicines in school. We also ask that you try to book medical appointments outside of school hours if possible. If medical appointments are within school hours, do please bring your child into school before and after the appointment.

Religious Holidays

Pupils are entitled to miss school for important religious holidays, however, this is still counted as absence when we calculate their attendance percentage. The entitlement is only for the religious holiday itself. If your children miss school on any day before or after the holiday, it is counted as unauthorised absence.

Inset Days

There are 195 school days in a year. We are required to assign 5 of these days as ‘Inset Days’. On these days, school is closed to children, but open to staff. We run whole-staff training on these days. We try to give you plenty of notice about our Inset days.

Attendance in Early Years

It is sometimes said that attendance does not matter as much when children are younger, but this is not true. Children go through their most rapid development at this stage, and also benefit from being in routines. Please see the Early Years leaflet for more on this: Early Years Attendance flyer

Term Time Holidays

Children are not entitled to take holiday absence during term time, and permission for term time absence will only be granted in the most exceptional of circumstances. If you believe your child requires a term time absence, you must fill in a request form which is available at the school office.

Supporting Documents (click to expand)