Absence from school = lost opportunity

It is important that children attend school regularly and on time.  At Marfleet Primary, we recognise that excellent attendance leads to excellent achievement. To promote whole school attendance, every week the classes who achieve above the government’s national average (96%) for primary school attendance are celebrated in assembly.

We are aware that we couldn’t improve our attendance figures without your support, and we very much appreciate parents who promote these good habits of punctuality and attendance.

It is recognised where children miss chunks of learning or don’t have a calm prompt start to the day it significantly impacts on their ability to learn and make progress. Also by getting children into these good routines around attendance it stays with them as they go through the education system and onward into adult life. It is important to us that we work in partnership with you to ensure that your children are in school every day and on time.

As a parent or carer, we ask you to:

• send your child to school on time every day, in the correct uniform and with the required equipment
• contact school on the first day of absence before 9:15am if they are unwell and return them to school when recovered.
• arrange appointments such as doctors, dentists or opticians before or after school, wherever possible. Evidence of any appointments is required to authorise your child’s absence from school.

Please come and speak to us if you are having difficulties getting your child into school. 

Pupil Absences

As a parent, having a child who is ill can be a very stressful time, whether caring for them, looking after other siblings, trying to contact the doctor or making arrangements with work.

Therefore please help us to help you, by reporting your child’s absence to school no later than 9.15am. Our answer machine is on 24 hours a day, so please leave a message if you ring school and there is no one available to answer your call. Alternatively you can email us on admin@mp.ebor.academy.

Unfortunately, if your child is absent and we do not hear from you, we have a duty of care to call each of your emergency contacts until we are able to establish that your child is safe and the cause for their absence.

If by 10am we still haven’t been able to speak to a parent/carer, we are then legally obliged to carry out a home visit. This is obviously an added pressure on parents and places a strain on staffing within the school, all of which could be easily avoided by simply notifying us by one of the methods above that your child will be absent that day.

Following a home visit, if contact has still not been made our duty of care will then extend to contacting 111; this is to ensure the safety and well-being of both children and parents/carers.

If your child is off for more than one day, please make sure that you let us know each morning that they won’t be in school again to avoid us having to call you to find out how they are.

Thank you for your support and cooperation in keeping our pupils safe.

Click HERE to view Marfleet’s attendance procedures.

More information regarding school attendance can be found on the council’s website, or by clicking on the following link:

http://www.hull.gov.uk/resident/schools-and-learning/school-attendance-and-absence

Click here for our attendance policy