Attendance
Regular attendance at school is vital if children are to reach their full potential.
Below is a copy of the school's attendance policy which highlights the harm that can be done when the pattern of a child's learning is disrupted through absence from school.
Note: Our school will not authorise absence for family holidays taken in term-time unless for exceptional circumstances.
If you are planning on booking a holiday due to exceptional circumstances a Leave of Absence request form must be completed and submitted BEFORE the holiday is booked.
Please download the form below by clicking on the link, complete and hand in to school:
Pupil Leave of Absence Request Document
Our School Attendance Policy 2023-2024
If your child is absent as a result of sickness or diarrhoea they must not return to school until 48 hours after the last episode in order to ensure we do not have a spread of the illness across school. This is in line with the Health Protection Agency document, “Guidelines for the Control of Infection and Communicable Disease in School and Early Years Settings”
Our Attendance
We are very proud of the super attendance here at St Patrick's and enjoy celebrating that with our pupils in celebration assembly each Friday.
Each week we announce the class that has the very best attendance for the week, always striving to be in school every day to have 100% attendance. In this way we do not miss out on important steps of learning, social times with our friends and teachers and enjoying being together in the family of St Patrick's.
It is always a very hard, fought title and trophy, to be our weekly winners.
We have an attendance display board in the corridor which is updated each Friday by our Head Boy and Head Girl, with the percentages for attendance that week and a trophy is added to the board for the winning class. The pupils enjoying looking how close their class was in achieving the winning attendance trophy and raising their aspiration and determination to win the next week. They love to see how well their class is doing - seeing how many times their class has won during the term, as they have a trophy badge put on on the chart each time!
Attendance Update: May 2023
Whole School Attendance:
Overall statutory school attendance from September to Friday 19th May was 96.2%
National reporting is for Years 1 – 6: Our C1 to C6 was 96.5%
Attendance for each class from Tuesday 6th September to Friday 19th May:
Nursery 90.0% Reception 93.8%
Class 1 96.0% Class 1-2 97.8% Class 2 96.8%
Class 3 97.5% Class 4 95.8%
Class 5 96.0% Class 6 96.2%
Thank you for working hard to ensure our pupils are in school every day, shown by the class attendance figures above.
The government expected attendance, that school is judged on, is 96% or higher – the vast majority of classes and year groups are now hitting those high attendance figures but some that are just below. Having high attendance is evidenced to have a significant impact on pupils learning and the progress they make, so it is essential that we have such great attendance figures so we can give our pupils the very best chance to reach their potential and be ready for the next stages of their learning journeys.
Persistent Attendance is classed as any pupil who has 10% absence or higher and school is judged on how it tackles this problem – our PA figure is currently 5.3% (May 2023) which is significantly lower than National at around 18% currently but still higher than it should be. It is vital that we ensure that this figure is as low as possible to give all our pupils the very best chance to reach their potential and be ready for the learning in their next class.