Attendance and Absence

ATTENDANCE:

At Our Lady of Mount Carmel, we believe that regular school attendance is fundamental in enabling children to maximise the educational opportunities available to them. Excellent attendance helps children to become emotionally resilient, confident and competent adults who are able to realise their full potential and make a positive contribution to their community; utilising their God-given talents.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel values all children. We work with families to identify the barriers to achieving and maintaining excellent attendance and offer the right services, at the right time, to resolve difficulties. The Senior Leader Responsible for Attendance (Mrs Woods) and Attendance Officer (Mrs Bates) monitor attendance weekly and use attendance data to identify any patterns of concern, whilst also celebrating success.

We provide a wide range of initiatives to promote good attendance including Marvin the Monkey, our half termly attendance trolley, our annual 100% attendance pizza party and attendance celebration on the weekly newsletter.

Where we have concerns about attendance or punctuality, or there is a lack of engagement from families to improve attendance, we will follow the school’s staged approach to improving attendance.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel's staged approach is child-centred and prioritises support and developing strong working relationships with families. We will use the Early Help process to provide support prior to escalation and consider how we can work with families to enable children to access their right to education.

Attendance figures for each child will be reported to parents termly: as part of the Parents’ Evenings and pupils’ Annual Reports. Parents can also access their child’s live attendance figure, at any time, through the ‘My Child at School’ app.