Dear Parents and Carers
For years and years the approach in education has been to get to school unless you absolutely can’t manage it. I remember very well the tone from my childhood that, unless there was a visible broken bone or a very clear temperature, it was always “get to school, you’ll feel better.” The last two years has, understandably, blown this away and the impact is very clear in school attendance.
This has led to the uncomfortable contradiction we now have with trying to get education back to what we recognise as normal, with GCSE and A-Level exams, being hampered by a nationwide instruction to look for the virus, which keeps children out of school. Subsequently, the national attendance figures are around 87-88% whereas pre -pandemic this was always around 94-95%. This makes a huge difference to learning – a child who maintains 90% attendance for the five years of secondary education will, in effect, be absent for six months. 80% for five years equates to a whole year’s absence – it’s a huge issue! For us, where attendance has always run above average at just over 95% we see that we are floating around 92%. On the one hand, I need to congratulate and thank everybody for keeping it that high, acknowledging that much of this is down to forced isolation periods around contracting the virus. However, I also want to start pushing it back up again and make school attendance the most important thing. We operate under rules that require us to test and take action, which we must continue to do, but within that figure there is also non-covid related absence which I strongly encourage everybody to avoid i.e. appointments, mild non-covid illness etc.
Let’s restart the mindset that we used to have of getting into school, even with some discomfort, and keeping up with the learning. And then, when isolation periods are dropped (as hopefully they may be in the next couple of months), our students will already have the attitude that will make them successful.
Best wishes
Andy Perry – Head Teacher