Requesting Absence
Attendance
At St John’s we strongly believe that ‘attendance is its own reward’. In other words, Children have to be here to learn and achieve.
St John’s stresses the legal duty for parents/guardians to ensure regular and punctual attendance of their child(ren).
Children should only be absent for: Illness, unavoidable medical or dental appointments and exceptional family circumstances, i.e. wedding or funeral.
Holidays During Term Time
Schools are under constant pressure to ensure high attendance; any school judged as ‘outstanding’ must achieve above 97%+ attendance rate. Whilst we may understand and sympathise with reasons for taking term time holidays, the law and Education Department Guidance is very clear.
The Department for Education states that a Head Teacher must not grant a holiday in term time unless there are “exceptional circumstances”. If you consider that your request for a holiday is exceptional you will now need to complete the form on the reverse of this notification. A response will be sent to you as soon as possible. If the holiday is not considered to be an exceptional circumstance, and you nevertheless take your child out of school for the holiday, the absence will be recorded as unauthorised.
In considering the decision whether to authorise the following will be taken into account:-
- Reasons given for the holiday;
- The time of the year/term;
- Whether your child will miss any preparation for assessments
- Whether your child will miss any assessments
- Your child’s previous attendance record;
Please note, we cannot take into consideration the cost of holidays during term time.
The relevant forms for requesting an absence for holidays and other occasions like medical appointment can be obtained from the school office.
