Attendance

Attendance shows your child’s record: days present, absent and late, with the dates.

The attendance view shows records published for the selected child and period.

The daily message

Many schools send an SMS on the day a child is marked absent. If you receive one and your child left for school as normal, ring the school immediately — do not wait for the evening.

A message that arrives when you knew about the absence is a sign the school has not been told. Let the office know, so the record can be corrected.

Reasons

An absence can be recorded with a reason — sick, permission granted, family matter — and authorised or not.

Authorised absences are still absences for the purpose of lessons missed. A child who misses eight days with permission has missed the same eight days of teaching as one who missed them without.

What the numbers mean

Attendance percentage is straightforward and easy to underrate.

A child at 90% attendance misses one day a fortnight — about four weeks of school a year. That is enough to lose a topic in every subject, and the effect shows up in results a term later, by which time the cause is not obvious.

Watch the pattern, not the total. Absences clustered on particular days are worth asking about. So are lates that only happen on certain mornings, or absences that started after a specific week.

Late arrivals

Lateness is recorded separately. Persistent lateness costs the beginning of the first lesson, which is often where the new material is introduced.

If mornings are the problem — transport, distance, a younger sibling — say so. Schools can usually work with a known constraint; what they cannot work with is not knowing.

After an absence

Your child has missed lessons. The material is usually available:

• Notes and video lessons published for the class.
• Their quests in the portal, which they can pick up from where they were.

An hour catching up on the day they return is worth more than a weekend of it later.

If the record is wrong

Tell the office promptly. Attendance is marked by a teacher on a register, and it is possible to be marked absent while present — a late arrival after the register, a lesson where the register was taken twice.

The correction is quick if raised the same week and awkward if raised at the end of term.

Long absences

For a planned absence — travel, a medical procedure — tell the school in advance rather than after. It gets recorded properly, and the teachers can prepare work.

For an extended illness, ask about the material. Most schools will make notes and recorded lessons available so a child can keep up from home.