Attendance, Absence and Registration Policy

Policy Statement

Our purpose at Orchard House is to promote exceptional attendance for successful learning, wellbeing, and safeguarding.

The school has a continuing responsibility to proactively manage and improve attendance across its school community.

Attendance is the essential foundation to positive outcomes for all pupils, including their safeguarding and welfare, and will therefore be seen as everyone’s responsibility in school.

That starts with the senior attendance champion on the school’s leadership team, but includes all school staff.

Legal Basis

• Parents must secure full-time education under the Education Act 1996, s. 7; failure may result in legal action under the Education Act 1996, s. 444.
• Complies with The School Attendance [Pupil Registration] [England] Regulations 2024, including new attendance codes: The School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024
• Meets statutory guidance in Working together to improve school attendance (Aug 2024): Working together to improve school attendance (applies from 19 August 2024)

Legislative Framework

1. Orchard House School encourages good attendance and punctuality.
2. This policy implements the statutory guidance Working Together to Improve School Attendance (DfE) effective 19 August 2024.
3. Complies with the School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024, including updated register codes, retention, and leave provisions.
4. Supports safeguarding as per KCSIE (Sept 2025) and the Children Missing Education statutory guidance: Keeping children safe in education – GOV.UK
5. Children missing education: statutory guidance for Hounslow local authority: hounslow.gov.uk – school attendance and absence
6. Takes into account statutory guidance: Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions

Responsibilities & Whole-School Culture

Governors

The Governors recognise the importance of school attendance and will:

• Promote it across the school’s ethos and policies.
• Ensure school leaders fulfil expectations and statutory duties.
• Regularly review attendance data, discuss, and challenge trends, and help school leaders focus improvement efforts on the individual pupils or cohorts who need it most.
• Ensure school staff receive adequate training on attendance.

Senior Attendance Champion

• All Staff: Accurately mark registers twice daily using the revised 2024 codes; complete daily follow-up for absences.
• Parents/Carers:
  • Notify the school by 8:30 AM on day one of absence.
  • Only request term-time leave in exceptional circumstances per Regulation 11, 2024.
  • Support early intervention meetings and attendance contracts.

Procedures

Registration & Record Keeping

1. Registration is carried out twice daily, prior to the morning and afternoon sessions. Registers are maintained electronically, with a full audit trail recording all entries and amendments. Registers close no later than 30 minutes after the session begins.
2. Registers are marked in accordance with the updated national codes from 19 August 2024, including K, Y6, Y7, C2, J1, etc. All codes are clearly annotated, and staff receive regular training on proper use.
3. Retention period: All attendance and admission registers are retained for a minimum of six years.
4. Registration is recorded on the school management system; however, in accordance with the School Attendance [Pupil Registration] [England] Regulations 2024 cited above, an additional back-up copy of the admission register and the attendance register is made not less than once a month in the form of an electronic, micro-fiche or printed copy and are retained for a period of three years after the end of that school year.
5. Monthly backups are performed and securely stored.

Senior Attendance Leadership

Jessica Nettleton (DSL) is our Senior Attendance Champion and is responsible for strategic oversight, data compliance, and audit functions with support, especially in terms of parent liaison, from the head. The Senior Attendance Champion acts as the operational Attendance Champion, liaising with the head, on occasion, parents, and external agencies, such as the LA Education Welfare Office.

The Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) acts as the operational Attendance Champion, liaising with families and agencies, such as the Hounslow EWS when necessary.

Early Intervention & Monitoring

• Identify and track students with attendance < 95%, < 90% (persistent), or < 50% (severe).
• Tiered Response: First-day emails → Attendance Champion analysis → letters → meetings → Attendance Contract/TAC meeting → Refer where necessary to LA and partner agencies.

Persistent Absence

The school will share information and work collaboratively with other schools in the area, local authorities, and other partners where a pupil’s absence is at risk of becoming persistent or severe.

Sickness Returns

The school will provide the local authority with the full name and address of all pupils of compulsory school age who have been recorded with code I (illness) and who the school has reasonable grounds to believe will miss 15 days consecutively or cumulatively because of sickness. Only one sickness return is required for a continuous period of sickness in a school year.

Absence

Illness

The school will be particularly mindful of pupils absent from school due to mental or physical ill health or their special educational needs and/or disabilities, and provide them with additional support.

School staff play a critical role in communicating this expectation to parents. They should also work alongside families to ensure that such circumstances do not act as a barrier to regular attendance by mitigating anxious feelings in school as much as possible.

The school takes into account the following guidance: Education for children with health needs who cannot attend school

Parents must telephone the school office or contact it by email before 8:30 to inform us if their child is ill. The school contact details are:

If a pupil is absent because of illness for five consecutive days, the school may request supporting evidence.

If no reason for absence is received by the school, then the reason for the child’s absence must be pursued by the school office. Any case where a parent refuses to give a reason for absence must be referred to the Head and may result in a referral to the Educational Welfare Officer.

If a pupil is persistently late or absent, the Head will write to the parents in the first instance and, if the problem continues, will invite them to a meeting. If the school’s efforts to effect improvement are unsuccessful, it will be necessary to refer the matter to the Education Welfare Officer. In this case, the school will write to the parents informing them of the referral.

Medical Appointments

To avoid disruption to a child’s education, wherever possible, medical or treatment appointments should be arranged to take place after school, at the weekends or during the school holidays, rather than during the school day. Where appointments during the school day cannot be avoided, such appointments should still be arranged with a view to causing the least possible disruption to the child’s education. Parents must notify the school of any intended absence of their child for such a reason, again by e-mail or telephone.

Other Authorised Absence

Absence from school may also be authorised if it is for one of the following reasons:

• Religious observance
• Exceptional family circumstances, e.g., bereavement
• Visits to or interviews at future schools

All absences must be explained by a parent or, in the case of a planned absence, permission requested in writing.

Lateness

Pupils who arrive at school after the registers have closed must report to the school office before joining their class. Department of Education codes will be used to record lateness.

Requests for Absence for Any Other Reason

The school will consider adjustments to practice and policies to help meet the needs of pupils who are struggling to attend school, as well as making formal reasonable adjustments under section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 where a pupil has a disability. Any adjustments the school will aim to be agreed by, and regularly reviewed with the pupil and their parents.

Requests from parents to take their child out of school for any other reason must be made through the Head (and not to the form teacher). Parents are requested to email or write to the school. All such correspondence will be kept in the child’s file.

The school expects each parent to ensure that his or her child has the best attendance record possible. To this end, the school publishes calendar dates well in advance, and it therefore expects total support from parents in this matter. Parents wishing to take a child out of school during term time for the purposes of holiday or other leisure or recreational events are advised that authorisation will not normally be granted, other than in the most exceptional circumstances.

When, because of an imminent exceptional circumstance, a parent makes such a request, the Head, at his discretion, will make the final decision as to whether the absence will be authorised or not and thus the manner of the attendance record in the school’s register and will communicate this to the parents in writing, usually reiterating a note about the disruption and disappointment often occasioned to a child by he or she missing lessons, sports activities and productions, etc.

Parents should also be made aware that future schools considering a candidate often ask for a history of attendance; a record of unauthorised absence may well prove unhelpful to a candidate and tip the balance against him or her. In addition, many officers do occasionally patrol ports and airports and have been known, during term time, to delay families with enquiries as to whether the child’s absence has been authorised by its school.

While the school tries to be as helpful as it may within reasonable limits, it is the school’s policy that staff should not normally be obliged to prepare work for a child to complete during any authorised absences. Nevertheless, the requirement for this in each case will be assessed on its individual merits and any potential offer of assistance determined by the Head.

Children Missing from Education

All children, regardless of their circumstances, are entitled to a full-time education that is suitable to their age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs they may have. Local authorities have a duty to establish, as far as it is possible to do so, the identity of children of compulsory school age who are missing education in their area. Appropriate safeguarding policies, procedures and responses are implemented for children who go missing from education, particularly on repeat occasions.

In accordance with statutory guidance (KCSIE), the school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead/Senior Admissions Officer will report to the local authority any pupil who fails to attend school regularly or has been absent, without the school’s permission, for a continuous period of 10 school days or more.

In addition, each school will inform its local authority within five days of any pupil who is added to the admission register other than those pupils who are registered at the start of the school’s youngest year of entry, unless the local authority requests information on the youngest children.

Each school will also notify the local authority when a pupil’s name is to be deleted from the admission register (after 20 school days of no contact following exhaustive enquiries) under any of the 15 grounds set out in regulation 8(1) of the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006 as amended, or under any of the five grounds set out in regulation 8(3) if the pupil is not of compulsory school age, as soon as the ground for deletion is met and no later than the time at which the pupil’s name is deleted from the register. This duty does not apply where the pupil has completed the school’s final year, unless the local authority requests that such information be provided.

Children missing education raises a safeguarding issue, particularly when a child leaves with no known destination. For this reason, although the legal requirement under the registration regulations is met by the school reporting to its ‘own’ local authority, the school may in some circumstances also contact the local authority where the child is normally resident.

LA informed within 5 days of any mid-year admissions or deletions per regulation.

Sponsored Pupils

Good attendance is part of the conditions of stay for sponsored pupils studying in the UK. It is the responsibility of the school to ensure accurate attendance monitoring and prompt follow-up. We may cease sponsorship of pupils who fail to meet the attendance requirements or those who miss ten consecutive contact points without authorisation from the Head.

Pupils missing 5 contact points without authorisation will be subject to a Pastoral Review with a member of the Senior Leadership Team and Dukes Director of Immigration. This meeting will put in place a plan to support the pupil in improving attendance or allow the school to increase support and monitoring of the situation.

Should a pupil miss 10 contact points without authorisation, the school will review the situation. There is a strong possibility that the school will cease sponsorship and report the absence to the UKVI at this stage. In such cases, UKVI are likely to curtail the pupil’s permission to stay in the UK, and the pupil will have to return to their home country.

If a sponsored pupil is absent from school for a significant period of time for any reason, a Pastoral Review with Dukes Director of Immigration will take place every two weeks from the first day of absence. The school will cease sponsorship if, as a result of the review process, it is concluded that it is unlikely that the pupil will be able to complete the course of study described on their CAS within the period of their permission to enter/stay in the UK. If the absence from school exceeds 60 days, the presumption is that sponsorship will be withdrawn at that time. This is unless there are exceptional circumstances such as serious illness or injury, and providing ongoing bi-weekly Pastoral Reviews do not conclude that the pupil is unlikely to be able to complete their course of study within the period of their permission to enter/stay, otherwise sponsorship will cease.

Promoting Attendance/Punctuality

The school has an attendance champion, currently the DSL, who works with school staff to regularly promote to pupils and parents the value and importance of good attendance and punctuality.

Staff will set a good example by being punctual.

Staff will use the school’s rewards and sanctions procedures to encourage punctuality.

Parents will be kept fully informed of any concerns regarding attendance and punctuality.

Individual cases where pupils experience attendance or punctuality difficulties will be investigated by the form teacher and, where appropriate, referred to the Head.

Monitoring

The school will regularly monitor and analyse attendance and absence data to identify pupils or cohorts that require support with their attendance and put effective strategies in place.

Attendance statistics will be monitored by the attendance champion each term to identify individuals or cohorts whose attendance causes concern.

Any member of staff who has concerns about any absence, or any pattern of absence, must inform the Head promptly.

Attendance Codes

Authorised Absence Codes

Unauthorised Absence Codes