Attendance
Regular and punctual attendance at school is a legal requirement and essential for pupils to maximise their educational opportunities. At St John's, we aim for every pupil to have 100% attendance. We want all of our pupils to achieve their full potential. Barriers such as poor attendance will hinder, delay or stop their progress. Our Attendance Policy, found on our Policies page, provides information on how we monitor, reward and support attendance.
Morning timings
Our school gates open at 8.30am, and children must be in their classes for registration by 8.45am at the latest.
Supporting Attendance at St John's
If your child is finding it difficult to come to school, please talk to us. We are here to listen, understand and work with you to help your child attend regularly and feel happy in school.
Our values of Gather, Grow, Go are at the heart of our approach:
- Gather – helping children feel welcomed, safe and part of our school family.
- Grow – building confidence, resilience and positive relationships.
- Go – encouraging children to enjoy learning and achieve their potential.
Support may include meetings with staff, attendance support plans, wellbeing or SEND support, Early Help referrals, and working with other services where needed.
We're here to help. If you have any concerns about your child's attendance, please get in touch.
How we celebrate attendance at St John's
At St John’s, we encourage excellent attendance by making school a place where children enjoy learning, building friendships and taking part in exciting opportunities.
We celebrate attendance and punctuality through:
- Weekly rewards for the year group with the highest attendance, including a non-uniform day, attendance stickers and recognition in assembly.
- Attendance Ted, awarded each week to the winning classes.
- Attendance Pup, awarded to the classes with the fewest late arrivals.
- Attendance badges for children who achieve regular 100% attendance milestones.
- Celebratory messages shared with families through Arbor.
- End-of-year awards, including Bronze, Silver and Gold certificates, with special rewards for outstanding attendance.
Alongside our celebrations, we work closely with families to offer support, remove barriers to attendance and ensure every child has the opportunity to Gather, Grow and Go each day.
Illness
If your child is ill, please read the NHS’s guidance to help you decide whether they can come to school: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/is-my-child-too-ill-for-school/ . This includes guidance and links for support if your child is feeling anxious about attending school. It is generally safe to send your child to school with a runny nose, a sore throat or a headache. Of course, if your child is vomiting, is very unwell, or has a high temperature of 38C or above you will need to keep them at home. Rest assured that our staff care for your children, and if they feel that your child becomes too unwell to be in school we will contact you.
If your child has sickness and or diarrhoea, please do not allow them to return to school until 48 hours after their last episode.
Medical evidence
In the majority of cases where you feel your child is too ill to attend school, medical evidence is not needed, but we are authorised to ask you for evidence where your child is regularly absent because of illness. If you are asked to provide evidence this does not need to be a letter from your doctor or consultant; it can be appointment cards, prescriptions, or notes of previous consultations.
Medical and dental appointments
To avoid disruption to your child’s attendance, medical and dental appointments should not be booked during the school day whenever reasonably possible. When they are, you should ask the school in advance for a leave of absence and collect your child as close to the time of the appointment as possible and return them to school for the rest of the school day afterwards.
Unauthorised absence and Penalty Notices
It should be noted that Penalty Notice fine amounts are set by the Department for Education, and schools do not receive this money. All fines are paid to the local authority, who must use it to provide continued attendance support to families and schools.
The fine for taking a child out of school during term time is £80 per child. If this fine is not paid in the first 21 days following the penalty notice, it will rise to £160. This will be doubled if it happens again within three years. Those with a third fine in a three-year period face prosecution. There is no right to appeal a penalty notice.
All schools are required to consider a fine when a child has missed 10 or more sessions (5 days) for any unauthorised reasons, including a term-time holiday.
