Unauthorised absence from school

[Over The Hill]

The attendance figures somehow get put into the OFSTED rating for the school.
Schools now have -
priority 1 - get a good OFSTED and certainly no lower than they have had in the past.
priority 2 - educate the kids.

so they get a bit silly about things like this as they are sh****** themselves it will knock down their rating.

I am not quite clear on how an unauthorised absence is better than an authorised one but I would put money on the issue stemming from their Ofsted.

 

[swee'pea99]

My youngest refused to attend the school's revision classes, seeded throughout the GCSEs, on account of she could revise better in her own way and time than at the school's bidding. We could see that she had things well in hand, and knowing what we do about how the school does such things (a combination of fascism and incompetence) endorsed her approach, on the basis that what mattered were the exams, period. The school started sending snotty notes about her unauthorised absences. We ignored them. They sent more, demanding that we contact them so that they could help us reach an arrangement that yada yada. We ignored them. She completed her exams, the letters stopped. The End.

 

[Crackle]

[QUOTE 3764865, member: 76"]The tricky bit is that MiniUser76 also did the DofE walk, although when they went to the Olympics, they got back 1.45am and he was in on time the next day, they got back from a German trip at 2, he was in the next day at 9, he had 5 stitches in head, and 30 hours later was sitting a geography exam, so the school know he has plenty of form in not skiving off because he is tired.[/QUOTE]
I think I would put that in an email, send it and be satisfied with that. I don't think it's worth too much energy. I'd probably make the point that no GP will be happy about writing a letter for a virus and that an appt takes a week to get and they'll have to have time off school for it - Foolish nonsense by the school.

 

[Over The Hill]

My daughter is just at the end of her first year at A level. Done the exams in 4 subjects and decided on the one she is dropping to carry on with 3.
School is creating a fuss and want her to attend the class for the subject she has sat the last exam in and is dropping. Clearly just so that they get a tick in the box and no concern that she will be sitting through hours of lessons in a subject she is not taking anymore.

All down to Gove!

 

[awomaninsane]

I would, out of principle, demand to have it changed. I email my daughters school about things on a far too regular basis- they must see my name pop up in their inbox and groan!
If you are not happy about something then you should say so because i'm pretty sure that if they werent happy with something your child had done they'd be pretty quick off the mark in telling you.

 

[Milkfloat]

My daughter is just at the end of her first year at A level. Done the exams in 4 subjects and decided on the one she is dropping to carry on with 3.
School is creating a fuss and want her to attend the class for the subject she has sat the last exam in and is dropping. Clearly just so that they get a tick in the box and no concern that she will be sitting through hours of lessons in a subject she is not taking anymore.

All down to Gove!

Not just a tick box, cash is involved here.

 

[swansonj]

Several of you assert that the school is shooting themselves in the foot because they are damaging their attendance figures.

Not so. I'm pretty sure the headline attendance figure is just that - attendance - so authorised and unauthorised absence count equally against it.

But more fundamentally, if as a school you wish to improve your attendance long term, how do you do that? You do it by creating a culture of attendance. And how do you do that? You demonstrate zero tolerance of absence. So classifying ambiguous absences as unauthorised instead of authorised could be a perfectly sound strategy. (For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not suggesting that yours could legitimately be classed unauthorised, I agree with everyone else the school are in the wrong.)

However:
The obsession with attendance, stemming from Ofsted and flowing into schools, is based on data showing a correlation between attendance and achievement. The first thing that anyone learns when they approach statistics is that correlation does not mean causation. But Ofsted have not learnt that. I have challenged Ofsted inspectors (when they threatened to put my school into "serious weaknesses" because our attendance was 94-point-something not 95) for any evidence that, for a given child, attendance correlates with achievement, but answer came there none.

 

[swansonj]

[QUOTE 3765331, member: 45"]There are sub-categories.[/QUOTE]

Well, of course, which why I said the "headline figure" - what matters to a school is the figure that Ofsted look at.

[QUOTE 3765331, member: 45"]The second bold isn't something that fits when you see how schools operate and interrogate the figures. Schools obsess about attendance, but the response isn't targeted. In many schools the fact is that the majority of the problem is caused by a minority of the families, who aren't really bothered about their child's attendance and so these few particular children are regularly absent and are the cause for bulk of the absence numbers. And these families aren't bothered about sanctions, cultures, letters, explanations about how absence affects learning or rules. Instead of focussing on this very difficult aspect, it's easier for schools to flatten the figures by not allowing the odd child to have a Friday off so that the family can (for example) make a long weekend visit to family in Scotland. This family are bothered about attendance and don't make it a regular occurrence.[/QUOTE]
I agree. I didn't say it was an educationally or socially desirable strategy, I merely said it was a sound strategy. And it is a sound strategy: no one doubts that by creating a culture of zero tolerance to absence, you can improve your attendance figures.

The point is that improving attendance figures should not be an objective in itself, but Ofsted, in their wilful, simplifying ignorance, have made it thus.

 

[vernon]

If they hold data, surely the Data Protection Act would place a requirement that it must be accurate (https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/principle-4-accuracy/). Therefore, saying that it can't be changed on the computer would be unacceptable.

What stalls that argument is what is meant by accurate? The dispute is about the category that the absence is place in, not about the absence.

Unauthorised absences are less desirable than authorised absences on a school's statistics/data profile. The can be perceived as truancies.

My school does everything it can to convert absences to authorised ones as do most schools.

 

[Wafer]

Storm in a tea cup? Schools are in a difficult position, the Government impose all sorts of targets and 'helpful suggestions' from people with no education qualifications (Michael Gove was a particular case in point) and then they get parents complaining for complying with them (same thing when people grumble about Ofsted, better moan at your MP than the school/ofsted who are just trying to comply with the requirements) .

In this case they've used their own judgement because more than likely some of the kids who missed the day were taking a sicky rather than actually being unwell. How are the school meant to sort out which is which without something like a doctors note? I don't think they have the time/resources to go through each pupil individually and consider whether they have a good/bad track record and make an individual subjective judgement on each, and still probably upset people anyway.

There are some reasons for focussing attention on attendance. Certainly in post secondary school age kids, the so called NEETs (Not in employment, education or training) correlates people who will go on require more support as adults. And though there are exceptions I'm aware of, there is some correlation with attendance and school attainment.
This might all seem pointless relating to one day off for one kid but the stats add up and it's a constant battle to make people see more than the headline figure because that's often what is focussed on, be it with managers, politicians or the press and the people who read dodgy news headlines/articles(i.e. everyone).

The bit about the computer is probably bs but being used to put a solid blocker in the way saying it can't be changed rather than opening up a debate about whether it should be.

As there are no consequences put it down to a bit of bad luck in this case and let it go. Following up on it will do nothing except cause you and them stress. I doubt it will be the last time your kid gets the wrong end of the system in their lives....

 

[swansonj]

And though there are exceptions I'm aware of, there is some correlation with attendance and school attainment.

Funny, I seem to recall typing "correlation does not equal causation" just three posts ago.

To spell it out: of course, across a sample of children, attendance correlates with attainment/achievement: children from middle class, professional families with a culture of learning do better at school, but also have a higher average attendance.

But this does not mean it's the attendance that is causing the attainment, any more than yellow fingers cause lung cancer or tonic water causes cirrhosis of the liver.

 

[Doseone]

We were in a very similar position when my son was in year 6. Long story short I went to the school and asked the headteacher if I could have a word and let her know very firmly what I thought. She basically hid behind the "it's not me it's the Local Education Authority".

It's pathetic, and what's more is turning a lot of parents against the schools - this is very short sighted as the schools are so reliant on the goodwill of the parents which is quickly evaporating.

 

[Wafer]

Funny, I seem to recall typing "correlation does not equal causation" just three posts ago.

To spell it out: of course, across a sample of children, attendance correlates with attainment/achievement: children from middle class, professional families with a culture of learning do better at school, but also have a higher average attendance.

But this does not mean it's the attendance that is causing the attainment, any more than yellow fingers cause lung cancer or tonic water causes cirrhosis of the liver.

Which is specifically why I said correlation not causation, I work in stats, I know the difference. It can be a symptom. The particular exception I know of it that the more deprived area in Somerset is in the catchment for what appears to be a particularly good school, and though attendance is better from that deprived area that expected, the attainment is still fairly poor. The difficulty is working out the cause and yes purely focussing on increasing attendance without understanding the cause may not help, and is why I mentioned the difficulty in getting people to look beyond the headline figures. If this was a story about a school in a deprived area with poor attendance rates people would be all over it saying well of course they aren't going to get good GCSE results if they are never in school....

But of course, attendance isn't the only thing that gets reported on, so lets not pretend that it's the one signifier being looked at and I'll go out on a limb and assume that being a few tenths of a percent below the target wasn't the only reason your school was close to getting a bad Ofsted outcome.

I see User76 is in Cheddar so I'll assume the school in question is Kings of Wessex, one of, if not the largest secondary school in the county, relatively affluent (I think that area has the highest average household income anywhere in Somerset) and they've just been Oftsed'd in March (getting a 'good').
So lots of kids to keep an eye on, would've had some targets from Ofsted as they weren't outstanding and it says attendance was in line with national average, so possibly one of the blockers to getting Outstanding, I don't know what the criteria for that is.

Yes this is a minor injustice in this case, but it's minor and has no consequences. Doesn't sound like a battle worth fighting to me and I'll give the school some leeway in terms of trying to manage the attendance of a large school at a time when the whole public sector is taking massive hits in terms of budget cuts and schools will feel that even if the government tries to assure us the cuts aren't to schools police, hospitals etc...

 

[david k]

Had issues with school around this, I understand the need to get kids in school but some rules are bizarre

 

[coffeejo]

I've no idea how the current system works but I think back to my own time at secondary school in the 90s (or, to put it more accurately, lack of time at school) and I can see now how helpful it would have been if someone had bothered to ask just why I wasn't turning up instead of writing me off.