Attendance & Punctuality
National GCSE, A Level and BTEC results show that students who attend well during their years of school perform better and stand a better chance of getting results above the grades that they are predicted.
At Barking Abbey we are dedicated to helping all of our students perform to their BEST and we promote the importance of attendance at every opportunity. As a school we are dedicated to helping our students get back pre Pandemic levels and as such have set students the target of achieving attendance that is between 98-100%, with the support of their parents.
Parents can encourage positive attendance through the following:
What do days missed from school mean for your child’s attendance
- Parents should be aware that missing only a few days in a year will have an impact upon student learning.
- We understand that students will feel ill from time and we agree that very ill students should rest at home but we would encourage parents to judge this carefully and send students back into school as soon as they are well enough. Students can be sent in late, with a note, when they begin to feel better so they do not miss as many lessons.
- Reporting serious medical issues allow the school to consider strategies that can enable learning while supporting students who need help with attending school and lessons as normally as possible.
- Alerting the school if a student has a problem with peers. Reporting an issue sooner rather than later allows the school to deal with a problem before a student begins to avoid an issue. All situations reported will be managed sensitively and a range of solutions will be explored with parents before an intervention is put into place.
- Booking dental and medical appointments outside of school time.
- Very importantly, family holidays should be booked outside of school time. Family holidays are very unlikely to be authorised by the Headteacher. As a school we follow Barking and Dagenham attendance policies which state that term time holidays should be unauthorised.
To help maintain awareness of student attendance, weekly automated attendance messages will be sent to parents advising of student percentages.
The school considers that all absences from school will disrupt continuity of learning. As a consequence we believe that absences should be kept to a minimum.
All parents must request leave of absence in writing. All leave of absence for holidays will be recorded as unauthorised; the School and Local Authority have the right to fine parents if they take any unauthorised absence for their child.
Children’s attendance is very carefully monitored by our Attendance Officer and Heads of Year.
Please click below for our Attendance Policy.
