Attendance
The Bliss Charity School is committed to helping every child make excellent progress and attain as highly as possible, as well as providing a rich and broad range of curricular and extra-curricular experiences for them to enjoy. High attendance is key to children being successful and benefitting fully from these opportunities, as well as helping them to make and sustain friendships.
By working together, parents/carers, pupils, staff and governors, at The Bliss Charity School can continue to achieve a high attendance rate which exceeds the national average.
Our whole school attendance target for 2024-2025 is 96%.
Lateness
It is very important that pupils arrive on time for the start of school. Pupils can be dropped off from 8.45 am and go straight to class. Children should enter through the front or back gate unaccompanied, ready to enter the school building.
It is very disruptive to their own education, and that of others in their class, if pupils are late. The very beginning of the day is just as important as the rest, as all classes practise key skills and consolidate previous learning as soon as the register is taken.
Children who are regularly late may miss out on spelling, phonics, handwriting or times-tables work which takes places daily as soon as the children arrive. Being late by just 5-10 minutes every day will affect the progress children make in these areas over the course of the year and their school life. Moreover, lateness also affect the achievement of others as adult support has to be re-directed into helping pupils ‘catch up’ when they arrive late to school instead of being used where it is most needed.
Pupils who arrive after the register closes will be marked absent for the whole session (a session being a morning or an afternoon) and this will count as an unauthorised absence, unless there is a legitimate reason for the child being late. Legitimate reasons do not include, for example, oversleeping, tiredness, missing the bus or finding/preparing uniform.
Absence
Term times are for education – children and families have 175 days off school each year to spend time together, including weekends and school holidays.
The following reasons are examples of absences that will not be authorised (please note, this is not an exhaustive list):
- Persistent, non-specific illness
- Illness of a sibling or a parent/carer (unless this is compliance with clinical and/or public health advice)
- Oversleeping
- Inadequate clothing/uniform
- Confusion over school dates
- Medical/dental appointments of more than half a day without very good reasons
- Child’s/family birthday
- Sporting/leisure occasion
- Shopping trip
- Family holidays
However, there are times when children cannot or should not attend school – decisions on whether to send a child to school should be informed by the latest NHS guidance (www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/is-my-child-too-ill-for-school/).
Please see section 9 of our Attendance Policy for circumstances in which absence will be authorised.
To request absence from school, please complete a ‘Request for Absence Form’.
School term dates for 2024-2025:
Leaving during the school day
Children who have to leave for any reason throughout the day should be signed out at the main office by a parent/carer. However, appointments during the school day are strongly discouraged – parents/carers are requested to make dental or medical appointments outside of school hours.
Leaving school early to travel to a family holiday/occasion is also not an acceptable reason to collect a child early from school.
