Important
Please ensure your child arrives promptly for Registration, which starts at 8.45 am
Reporting Your Child's Absence
If your child is not able to attend school, please contact our attendance line on the initial day of absence and subsequently each day before 8.30 am, providing details of the absence. This also includes any medical appointments. If a phone call is not received, the school will contact parents via email to establish your child’s whereabouts followed by a phone call from the Attendance Officer if no contact has been made – this is a safeguarding requirement.
On returning to school, if your child has medical evidence to support their absence, for example: a doctors note, please hand this into the Attendance Officer at Student Reception or email it to jkinder@mhs.potteries.ac.uk
Medical Appointments will only be authorised on receipt of relevant documentation from the appropriate agency.
It is also important to inform us of any personal issues or changes of circumstance that might affect your child’s attendance.
Medical/Dental Appointments
If a pupil has a medical appointment that can not be conducted out of school hours, written medical evidence from the appropriate agency needs to be supplied to the Attendance Officer, either before the appointment or upon returning from the appointment. Medical evidence should be handed to the Attendance Officer at Student Reception or emailed to jkinder@mhs.potteries.ac.uk
The sessions missed due to medical appointments will be given an ‘M = medical’ mark. It is important to note that ‘M’ marks do not count towards the pupils overall attendance, but is kept on file as supporting evidence for a pupils attendance; this is in accordance with DfE and local authority legislation.
Holiday Absences
The Department for Education has announced important changes to legislation surrounding holidays in term time.
References to ‘family holiday’ and ‘extended leave’ have now been removed from DFE guidance. These new amendments make it clear that Headteachers may not grant any leave of absence during term time unless there are “exceptional circumstances”. The guidance allows no entitlement to parents to take their child on holiday during term time.
To illustrate the impact of taking holidays during term time, it was noted in the DFE’s recent review that, if a child is taken for a two week holiday every year and has the average number of days off for sickness/appointments, then during their school career they will have missed the equivalent of a whole year of school.
Up until this point, Moorside High School has always considered applications for leave of absence sympathetically, and authorised term time absence, providing certain criteria was met. This can no longer be the case.
If, despite these changes in law, you wish to take leave during term time, we would appreciate it if you would complete a ‘Notification for a Leave of Absence’ form. This will allow us to identify the cause for your child’s absence, ensuring that our safeguarding procedures are kept to. If you wish to apply for authorised leave under “exceptional circumstances”, you should write to the Headteacher directly.
It is important to point out that, in an attempt to address poor attendance and unauthorised absences, the Local Authority may decide to issue a fixed penalty fine and/or prosecute parents under the Education Act 1996 if a holiday is taken during term time.