Attendance and Exceptional Leave Requests

BWMAT attendance strategy - All Day, Every Day, On Time

School Attendance Responsibilities at Bath and Wells Multi Academy Trust

Attendance is everybody’s responsibility, and our schools are dedicated to supporting strong attendance for children and young people so that they receive an excellent education. Senior leadership teams strive to develop a culture where all parties are clear on their role and therefore can be supported and held to account. To enable all parties to fulfil their role, clear systems and procedures are implemented which are understood by all and applied consistently. Our approach has a strong focus on preventative measures and swift intervention. This allows leaders to plan for contextual challenges, alongside educating parents and carers on the impact of absence from school, both academically and socially. The key principle, underpinning our approach of early intervention, is to develop a voluntary partnership with both parents/carers and pupils with the aim to understand barriers and work with families to remove them.

Term time and Exceptional Leave

We discourage all parents from taking their child out of school during term time to take holidays.

Taking a child on holiday in term time interrupts the learning of the whole class and the teachers have to spend time helping the children catch up when they return. Therefore parents should arrange holidays during the 13 week school holiday periods.

Holidays taken within the school term (except in exceptional circumstances agreed by the Headteacher) will be deemed as unauthorised absence. The expectation of the Local Authority is that term-time holidays should not be planned or booked as they are likely to lead to the issuing of a penalty notice. Parents /carers who take their children on unauthorised, term-time holidays may be issued with a penalty notice or subject to court proceedings for failing to ensure their child’s regular school attendance under section 444 of the Education Act 1996.

Exceptional circumstances does not include

Cheap holiday cost
Getting personal paperwork, visas updated (this should be planned into holiday periods)
Visiting relatives (this should be planned into holiday periods)

Exceptional circumstances must be: