It is incredibly important that your child attends school every single day. As a school, we expect all children to achieve at least 96.1% attendance over the school year - we feel that this allows for a reasonable amount of days off through illness. 

We have a number of rewards systems in place to ensure that children who attend well, or significantly improve their attendance are rewarded for their efforts. 

We also have a number of sanctions that may be used if your child's attendance is causing us concern. 

These are outlined on this page, but if you have any further queries do come and speak to us in school.

How do we reward brilliant attendance at Waverley?

Excellent attendance is vital in order for children to achieve their full potential. If your child attends every day, on time they have an opportunity to earn a number of rewards:

• Attendance Shop
• Praise Postcards
• 100% attendance termly certificates
• Yearly award: All pupils who achieve 100% attendance for the whole academic year will receive a special experience at the end of the summer term (this could be a party, trip to cinema, bowling or as last year a NERF party in school). They will also be awarded with a special certificate to mark the achievement and a 100% attendance badge to wear with pride on their uniform. 

What happens if we are concerned about your child's attendance

We want to work with you to ensure that your child attends well. If there is an issue that may impact on your child's attendance please come and discuss this with us as we may be able to work with you to resolve the issue.

The government define any child whose attendance is less than 90% as a persistent absentee. If your child is a persistent absentee, these are the steps we will take:

• Send emails every fortnight advising you of your child's attendance.
• We will advise you by letter that your child is now classed as a persistent absentee and that their attendance will be monitored by school over a 4-week period. 
• We will offer you an Attendance Contract. This is an opportunity for you to come in to school and discuss your child's attendance with the Attendance Officer (Mrs Gurkin) or Director of Pastoral Care (Mrs Selkirk). At this meeting we will talk about what might be impacting on your child's attendance and how we can work together to ensure that it improves. 
• Following the offer of Attendance Contract, we will internally monitor your child's attendance. During this time, we will not authorise any absences without medical evidence (e.g. a doctor's note or proof of medical appointments). 
• If, following internal monitoring, we are still concerned about your child's attendance we will refer the matter to the local authority who will legally monitor your child's attendance. This can result in fines and prosecution. 

It is important to recognise that, on average, a 90% attendance rate means that your child misses:

• One half day every week
• Nearly four school weeks every academic year
• Over one school year in a child’s school career

Holidays in term time

If you are taking your child on holiday during the school term you must complete a holiday request form, which will allow us to code your child's attendance accordingly. We are unable to authorise any holidays in term time and these will be classed as an unauthorised absence. 

We will:

• Send written confirmation that your holiday has not been authorised.
• Mark your child's absence as a G code (holiday not authorised).

The Local Authority may:

• Issue a holiday warning letter
• Issue a fixed penalty notice (fine)
• Take legal action (extreme cases)