Attendance
Attendance at John Cabot Academy
Excellent attendance is key to enabling a student to make progress and fulfil their potential.
Article 28 – All children have the right to a good quality education
At John Cabot Academy, we actively promote and celebrate good attendance every day as it is essential for learning and attaining. Staff work with students and their families to support parents and carers in helping them to meet their legal duty to ensure that their children attend school regularly and on time. Attendance is monitored daily and challenged when a student’s attendance falls below 96%.
The link between attendance and achievement is well documented. At John Cabot Academy, we want all of our students to achieve the very best examination results that they can and poor attendance and broken weeks are likely to have a significant impact on your son or daughter’s achievement.
Students with irregular attendance …….
- Lose momentum with their lesson work and have chunks of missed learning
- Lose the thread of the topics being taught.
- Become demotivated and anxious about returning to the academy
- Miss out on important guidance and pastoral support
- Less likely to feel part of the academy community.
Illness – My Child is unwell
- If your child is unwell please call the attendance line on 0117 976 3000 / Option 2 / Option 2 before 8:30am to let us know providing details of the illness.
- If your child is unwell for more than one day you will need to call on each morning of the absence.
If the Academy has not heard from the parent or carer about an absence, we will contact you to find out the reason for the absence via our automated truancy text service.
On the student’s return to the Academy following an absence, the parent or carer must write a short note which states the reason for the absence. All hospital and dental cards or letters must also be provided in order for the absence to authorised.
The Academy will report any unauthorised or continued absence to the attendance team who will then contact the parents to discuss the reasons for the absence. Legal action and fixed penalty notices (fines) are issued to parents for students who do not attend regularly.
Medical Appointments
If you do need to make a medical appointment for your child please try and arrange for before or after school.
Punctuality
Punctuality to the Academy is also extremely important so that the student can actively engage and benefit from all lessons throughout the day. We ask that you ensure that your child leaves home for school early enough to ensure that they arrive on time.
- Your child must arrive at school on time. The school day starts at 8:40am, our usual ‘5 minute rule’ applies, if a child arrives after 8:45am, they will go to the SLR for one period.
- Late arrivals after the registers have closed (9:10am) will be recorded as unauthorised absence which may result in a penalty notice of £80 per parent, per child.
- Parents or carers can view their child’s attendance on the MCAS App.
Holidays / Term Time Leave
As per current regulations and DfE advice on school attendance (2024) we would like to advise you that the Principal will not grant any Leave of Absence in term time unless exceptional circumstances exist. By exceptional circumstances we mean rare, significant, unavoidable and short. By unavoidable, we mean an event that could not reasonably be arranged another time.
