when a child is off sick from school ?

thegirlintheattic

11 days is nearly a day off a week so far - it all adds up. It is 82% attendance which is classed by the government as persistent absence. The threat in the letter is pretty standard, and if previously your DS's attendance was good and the school believe the illness then it will not be taken to the council and to court. However you may find the school asking for medical notes for further absence.

At out school under 95% puts a child into the 'watch' list where they are warned about good attendance and further absences are monitored. Below 90% gets council involved, parents in etc. Obviously this isn't the case if there is a recognised ongoing health problem.

Why was he off for 5 days with cold/flu (so you really mean a cold) - a work place would be questioning that, and so would the attendance office at our school. Perhaps understandable if it was a young child or one with other health needs, but a high schooler?

Here are a few facts that we were told a few weeks ago:

Below 90% attendance is half a day off a week, over a year that is 4 weeks off (100 lessons) and over high school that is half a year missed.
17 school days off, statistically means a whole GCSE grade dropped
With below 88% only 25% of students get 5A*-C grades

Wicked_witch

If you explain you won't have a problem. My son has had up to five weeks in a year off school before- he was getting tonsillitis really badly and the antibiotics also gave him serious stomach upsets. The doctor refused to refer him for an operation as their criteria for referral is six episodes in a year and he never had more than 5 (or less than 5 either, grrr). We even asked the LEA if they could write a letter to the doctor citing the time off he'd had and the way it was affecting his education (badly as he wasn't academic and has dyslexia!) but they said they couldn't, because it was genuine illness and not truancy!!! So the likelihood of you getting into trouble for 11 days is extremely remote.

And yes, it did have a huge negative impact on his GCSE's, nothing above a C Luckily he has grown out of it now it seems, so will hopefully have some reasonable level 3 results.

cutestkids

I think that one of the problems is that some people keep their kids off for too long if they have a cold when they could be in school.

You say he was off with cold/flu for 5 days, which was it as they are two very different illnesses, if a cold then really 5 days is a bit OTT to be off.

If real flu where he was so ill that he was unable to get out of bed the 5 days is fair enough.

PolishBigSpender

That's just ridiculous. You must be joking.
11 days of absence is really not worth mentioning.

pavlovs_dog

daska wrote: »

I had this with DSD a few years ago when she got an injury a couple of days after she moved up from a very small primary to a very large secondary school.

The school were actually very apologetic about calling us in and explained that this is always worse in the Autumn term because 11 days over half a term means the official attendance rate falls below the cut-off where the LA policy dictated that they had to take action.

I think DSD had something daft like a 4% attendance rate as a result of the timing of her accident. No question that anyone thought we were bad parents or she was faking it, it was all due to red tape.

Daska has hit the nail on the head here. It is not so much the number of days that is a concern but the percentage attendance. This is a key performance indicator for schools, hence the eagerness to get kids into school with their bums on seats unless there is a genuine reason for their (protracted) absence.

In Wales for example, where schools are banded rather than ranked in league tables, attendance percentages are a key consideration during the ranking process. You can have the best exam results going, but if attendance is poor it will really knock your banding.

Many schools operate a 'first response' system (where parents of absentees are phoned/texted after 9.30am to enquire about the child's whereabouts), and this is often triggered by attendance percentages dropping below 92%. If there is a genuine reason for absence the head of year should be able to override the system and remove the child, but some schools aren't as vigilant as others.

Back to the OP, as a school we are legally obligated to contact parents when attendance drops below 92%. References to court etc are pretty standard legalese at this juncture. There would need to be significant, ongoing involvement from an EWO before things reached that stage.

Rather than fret about the letter, why not engage the school in how they can help ensure your child catches up on the learning missed through absence? And should there be any future instances of absence where the child is well enough to work, but not well enough to attend IYSWIM (e.g. contagious but doesn't feel unwell) you are within your rights to ask for work to be sent home so your child can avoid falling too far behind. I receive such a request at least once a month.

Grumpygit

thegirlintheattic wrote: »

11 days is nearly a day off a week so far - it all adds up. It is 82% attendance which is classed by the government as persistent absence. The threat in the letter is pretty standard, and if previously your DS's attendance was good and the school believe the illness then it will not be taken to the council and to court. However you may find the school asking for medical notes for further absence.

At out school under 95% puts a child into the 'watch' list where they are warned about good attendance and further absences are monitored. Below 90% gets council involved, parents in etc. Obviously this isn't the case if there is a recognised ongoing health problem.

Why was he off for 5 days with cold/flu (so you really mean a cold) - a work place would be questioning that, and so would the attendance office at our school. Perhaps understandable if it was a young child or one with other health needs, but a high schooler?

Here are a few facts that we were told a few weeks ago:

Below 90% attendance is half a day off a week, over a year that is 4 weeks off (100 lessons) and over high school that is half a year missed.
17 school days off, statistically means a whole GCSE grade dropped
With below 88% only 25% of students get 5A*-C grades

We had a letter from my DD's school saying her attendance is 91.2% in October and quoting those stats in bold above.

Whilst I can see that they do need to monitor and try to manage any situations that arise, in some cases these stats are just rubbish - they make the children go home and then moan to the parents that their attendance is low! My DD was off for 3 days in October with a chest infection - it probably didn't help that the half term was in October as well thereby dropping the number of school days available.

As for the OP - why not treat your child's illness like you would your own - take him to the dr to get a "sick note" then the school can't really complain that he's been off when he's seen a dr and it's not just a mum being over protective (IYSWIM)

valk_scot

Some parents do keep kids off for the slightest sniffle. Some folk keep their kids off because they've slept in/got a hangover/can't be arsed to take them to school that day/want to take them to visit granny/on holiday etc etc and it's easier to phone the child in sick. I'm not accusing you of doing any of this of course! But the school knows perfectly well it goes on and they're also very aware it has a negative impact on the child's schooling. So these targets are set to flag up when a child falls below them and the school can look into the reason for absences.

They can sound very heavy handed, yes, but that's not really aimed at folk who have legitimately kept their kids off, it's aimed at the parents who either can't or don't give a damm about their kid's education and attendence, to metaphorically slap them into paying attention.

Just go in, have the chat, be honest and look keen to work with the school re catch up work. It's a great time to ask about catch up procedures, actually, and makes you look motivated. But you're not going to get into trouble over your child's legitimate absences, nope.

Carl31

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

That's just ridiculous. You must be joking.
11 days of absence is really not worth mentioning.

the ops child has been doing the equivalent of 4 day weeks since the start of term

That wouldnt concern you if you were a school beadteacher or something? thats 20% down on available learning this year so far

Lunar_Eclipse

Can't help you with procedure, except to say the school will simply be following their protocol and like you, I wouldn't be concerned. It sounds like your child has been unlucky; I think that's the way illness goes sometimes as one's immume system is weakened.

My kids drag themselves in when I sometimes don't think they should, but I'm a bit surprised by some of the comments. It's parental choice and judgement whether to send a child into school when they are ill, or simply feeling unwell. Personally, the way education is these days with tests every week and what I see as fairly stressful environments, I don't think they're the place to be if you're not feeling virtually 100%. Also, there'd be much less spreading round of horrible colds and other illnesses, that make you feel quite dreadul (wanting to be in bed all day) if people didn't drag themselves in to school when they should be resting. Is this really in the child's interest?

I also don't think those statistics about the effects of absence on GCSE performance are related to cases of genuine illness, on the whole. Firstly, I suspect they assume the child doesn't make up the work (which I ensure happens with my kids) and I also suspect correlate with truancy and low performing individuals, as opposed to illness. Research suggests you can cover a GCSE curriculum in an average of (only!) 30 hours, just to keep perspective on time efficiency in schools and illness related absences.

As a parent, I am legally responsible for my child's education, so time off for illness should fall firmly on my shoulders and not the schools.

pelirocco

Lunar_Eclipse wrote: »

Can't help you with procedure, except to say the school will simply be following their protocol and like you, I wouldn't be concerned. It sounds like your child has been unlucky; I think that's the way illness goes sometimes as one's immume system is weakened.

My kids drag themselves in when I sometimes don't think they should, but I'm a bit surprised by some of the comments. It's parental choice and judgement whether to send a child into school when they are ill, or simply feeling unwell. Personally, the way education is these days with tests every week and what I see as fairly stressful environments, I don't think they're the place to be if you're not feeling virtually 100%. Also, there'd be much less spreading round of horrible colds and other illnesses, that make you feel quite dreadul (wanting to be in bed all day) if people didn't drag themselves in to school when they should be resting. Is this really in the child's interest?

I also don't think those statistics about the effects of absence on GCSE performance are related to cases of genuine illness, on the whole. Firstly, I suspect they assume the child doesn't make up the work (which I ensure happens with my kids) and I also suspect correlate with truancy and low performing individuals, as opposed to illness. Research suggests you can cover a GCSE curriculum in an average of (only!) 30 hours, just to keep perspective on time efficiency in schools and illness related absences.

As a parent, I am legally responsible for my child's education, so time off for illness should fall firmly on my shoulders and not the schools.

Yes you are legally responsible for their education , however parents are not legally required to send their children to school for education , so its rather a farce .

I suspect its more about the schools records then it is about the child's wellbeing