Our attendance policy can be found below.

Key points in the policy include:

• Attendance and the law:
  • By law, all children of compulsory school age must receive an appropriate full-time education (Education Act 1996).  Parents have a legal duty to ensure their child attends school regularly at the school at which they are registered.
  • Parents may be recognised differently under education law, than under family law. Section 576 of the Education Act 1996 states that a ‘parent’, in relation to a child or young person, includes any person who is not a parent (from which can be inferred ‘biological parent’) but who has parental responsibility, or who has care of the child.
  • Unauthorised absence may result in the school referring to the Local Authority for sanctions and/or legal proceedings.  This may include issuing each parent with a Penalty Notice for £120, reduced to £60 if paid within 21 days or referring the matter to the Magistrates Court whereby each parent may receive a fine up to £2500 and/or up to 3 months in prison. If a parent is found guilty in court, they will receive a criminal conviction.
• Leave of absence requests:
  • Headteachers may not grant any leave of absence during term time unless there are "exceptional circumstances" and they no longer have any discretion to authorise up to ten days of absence each academic year.

At Lakelands Primary School 'exceptional circumstances' will be interpreted as:

... being of unique and significant emotional, educational, or spiritual value to the child which outweighs the loss of teaching time (as determined by the headteacher). The fundamental principles for defining ‘exceptional’ are events that are “rare, significant, unavoidable and short”. By 'unavoidable' we mean an event that could not reasonably be scheduled at another time, outside of school term time.

We will not consider applications for leave during term time:

• at any time in September. This is very important as your child needs to settle into their new class at the start of the academic year as quickly as possible.
• during assessment and test periods in the school’s calendar affecting your child. 
• when a pupil’s attendance record already includes any level of unauthorised absence or they have already been granted authorised leave within that academic year.

If leave of absence is authorised, the school will not provide work for children to do during their absence.  Parents are however advised to read with their children and encourage them to write a diary while they are away.

Our leave of absence application forms can be found here.