Attendance

A bit of background

Let’s begin with four startling facts:

Did you know….?

1 in 3 students with poor attendance (below 80%) do not achieve any qualifications at all
Only 8% of students with poor attendance (below 80%) achieve 5 or more GCSEs at A* - C grades
A student with 85% attendance will miss 29 days in a year – that is a half term of learning lost!
A student who misses 38 days each year will miss 2 whole years of learning by the age of 16

Imagine the damage done to a child’s education if they have poor attendance in Reception when they should be learning the basics of reading, writing and mathematics. At the time of writing six of our Reception children have attendance below 85% and are destined to become part of these horrible statistics above.

Our improving attendance

The vast majority of our parents ensure that their children attend school well and we are proud of our improving attendance rates which are now close to the national average of 94.7%. Improved attendance has been a factor in our improving standards.

Never being late – a vital life skill and also good manners

Punctuality is also very important. The school day starts promptly at 9.00, and immediately after the register has been taken the children are straight into their first lesson, usually literacy or mathematics. If children do arrive late they find it very hard to catch up on the work they have missed.

Help your child’s class to win the competitions

To encourage children to achieve good attendance and punctuality we have class competitions. Each week the class with the best attendance hosts Attendance Bear and classes with perfect punctuality will host Early Bird.

Camden ’s role

This is Mohamed Shire, our educational welfare office (EWO). Mohamed works for Camden and once every two weeks inspects our registers. If a child’s attendance does fall too low then Mohamed will get involved. In the worst cases parents can be fined and even end up in court. Mercifully, that does not happen too often at Gospel Oak.

Wish you were here?

It is important that parents understand that there is no automatic right to taking holidays during term-time. The authorisation of holidays is at the discretion of the headteacher. Any request must be made in writing. It is our policy to be sympathetic where a child has a good attendance record and is achieving well. We would not authorise a holiday close to test times (in particular for Year 6 SATS).

Class attendance competition

There is a new competition each half-term and the winning class is given an extra playtime.

This is how a class can earn points:

Class attendance over 93% in a week (1 point)
Top class in a week (3 extra points)
Second best class in a week (2 extra points)
Third best class in a week (1 extra point)
If a class has 100% attendance for a week (2 extra bonus points)
The top class each week also wins the attendance bear.

Last Updated 8th March