Attendance

At Community Pre-Schools we recognise the benefits of good attendance for your child's development and believe that continuity and routines are important for higher attainment and rapid progress. For this reason we ask parents to work with us to ensure regular attendance is a normality and is valued as important.

It is also important that our records of children’s attendance are accurately kept and regularly monitored to ensure that we can identify any potential problems and look for patterns. All staff are alert to signs that children who are missing might be at risk of abuse or neglect, and appropriate action is taken when children and learners stop attending.

We are aware that attendance is not statutory, but that non-attendance could be an indicator of other concerns. We are particularly aware of the need to monitor groups such as children who are in receipt of two year old funding, and those for whom we receive Early Years Pupil Premium, as these groups are considered to be vulnerable learners.

Procedures

Children’s attendance is monitored through daily registers. All absences and reasons given for them are recorded.
Parents are asked to inform us in person, by phone or by text, if their child will not be attending for any reason, as soon as possible. If we are not contacted, we will contact parent, and if that fails will ask parents about absences on the child’s return.
All absences will be recorded, and frequent absences (75% attendance or less) will be investigated and further action or monitoring considered. We will always discuss our concerns with parents and endeavour to enable children to attend as regularly as possible.
Absence is also monitored for the health and well- being of children, for example so that we are aware of outbreaks of illness which need to be investigated, or to warn parents of infections such as German measles.
Monitoring attendance and use of government funded hours may be passed on at the local authority’s request.
If a child is missing from pre-school on several occasions or stops attending without explanation, staff are alert to the possibility of risk of abuse or neglect, and will inform the DSL who will investigate and liaise with outside agencies.