Following a bit of confusion and some misinformation circulating in the community, we would like to clear up how we calculate Attendance Awards for the children and also how we manage absence for religious observance
Schools are expected to incentivise attendance – we have to demonstrate how we do it to Ofsted, for example – and we do this in numerous ways, first and foremost in trying to provide a nice environment, kindness and lots of fun – in lessons and beyond those – to make children want to come to school.
Beyond that, we have some ‘global’ incentives and some others that are more targetted and ad-hoc, perhaps say for a class that needs a bit of a boost. Others might target individual children for whom attendance is a challenge.
The generic whole-school reward scheme is that at the end of each year we celebrate those children who have attendance that is at or above the national target of 97%. The celebration usually takes the form of recognition in a special assembly and a small token such as a badge, certificate or wristband. We know that the 100% badges in particular have become highly prized, which is what we’d hope for, of course!
Like many schools (still do), we used to only award at 100%, which is indeed a great achievement in any given year. However, as we always want to be that bit more inclusive and kinder than the average school, we extended our awards to over 97%. We recognise that this can still take some doing and resilience and also that the odd absence can’t be helped. It’s not a perfect, flawless system, but it’s the best we can do. We have some children with profoundly life-affecting conditions that mean they are unlikely to ever achieve 97%, some who do well to be here more than 50% of the time. We celebrate their efforts in other ways.
One thing we would like to clear up is a rumour circulating recently that being off school to celebrate Eid counts against a child. This is untrue and has caused quite a bit of understandable upset and anxiety in the community and and a fair bit of extra work for us here to repair relationships, children’s wellbeing and the damage to our reputation..
Absence for Eid – one day for each Eid – does not count (to us) as an absence. It is marked as Religious Observance. It appears as an absence on the official statistics, but we choose to disregard it in any of our award calculations. We always have done. We try to be flexible to make Eid as easily manageable as possible for our families, whilst still following the laws around school attendance. We do not, as most schools do and we are in fact supposed to, ask that absence for Eid is officially requested – we take it as a given and a right. We celebrate Eid in school, as near to the actual date as we practically can, with parties. We share Eid messages of peace and goodwill with our community and it is a source of some pride that Eid has become such a big part of our school life, just as we are proud that our diverse community typically all join in celebrating Christmas and Easter. It is all part of what makes our school somewhat unusual and special.
Given the above, it is disappointing that people would circulate rumours that we discriminate against children who celebrate Eid. Ironically, it is our commitment to such things that lead to a lot of people wanting to transfer their children here from other, less inclusive settings. For example, we had no fewer than nine official admissions appeal meetings for places over the Summer – six of these cited our commitment to multi-culturalism and inclusion as the reason for wanting a place. Sadly, none were successful as we’re full, but the point remains…
We hope this clarifies the attendance awards and our approach to absence for religious observance and that any misconceptions and upset are addressed.