Michele Marquet, Acting Head of School

Dear Parents and Carers

It is hard to believe that the middle of next week sees us halfway through the first term! There is much to look forward to with the Senior School Drama Production of Durrenmatt’s The Visit next week, several more weeks of sports fixtures, Music Recitals later in the term and the CETOP Family Fun Day at Junior School on 16 March.

This term, we have been considering ways we can strengthen the way families and school can work together for the benefit of our students. One complex area where this is so important is in the area of attendance. Since the Covid years, more irregular attendance has been a feature at all schools. It raises the question is this something we should really worry about?

A day away doesn’t really matter, does it?

About ten years ago, the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER) released a study about the impact of absences on academic achievement of students in Australian schools. It was fascinating. 

Even before the Covid pandemic, Australia has some of the highest absence rates in the world, particularly during the high school years. Some absence is unavoidable. Illness, health complications and compassionate leave are all reasons a student will need to be away from school. The research focused on the levels of absence for other reasons.

As parents and educators who care about our children’s learning, we need to ask when does the rate of absence begin to impact academic achievement? The research showed that even one day’s absence makes a difference. Larger levels of unauthorised absence can be tracked through achievement levels across a child’s primary school years and well into high school.

The learning area where absence had the biggest impact was writing. Reading and numeracy skills were also impacted, but not quite to the same extent. Why might writing be so impacted? Writing is a complex skill. Its development naturally lags behind the growth of reading skills, so that a child can usually comprehend more advanced texts than the standard of writing they can produce. Frequently, children practise the skill of reading at school and at home. Writing tends to be practised mostly at school and requires higher levels of teacher input to help children put together coherent, well-constructed texts. Missing writing lessons really matters and, as students move into the older years of schooling, when writing becomes one of the key ways they express their understanding in assessment-based scenarios, teacher input into how to hone the skills needed to write well in different subjects becomes absolutely vital.

Researchers could show that the pattern for school attendance and its impact began much earlier than we might expect: in Year 1. A key year for learning how to read and write, Year 1 is also the time that children learn about the importance of commitment and showing up. They come to understand that school is not optional, or something we only do when something better is not on offer. They learn about the value of going to school every day. The post-Covid era has seen a drop in the universal understanding that learning best occurs at school in person, but more recent research affirms that face-to-face remains the most effective environment to maximise learning outcomes for our students.

Why might even a day’s absence cause such an impact on a student’s learning progress? Possibly, it is because it is not only what the student misses on the day of absence but how long it takes them to feel back up to speed about what is happening in the classroom on their return. In fact, a day’s absence impacts more than just that day away. They miss things that cannot be caught up so easily and then can feel out of sync on the day they return. It may take that second day for them to feel ‘normal’ in the classroom learning environment again.

In the Independent Schools sector, the most common reason for absences outside of illness, used to be family travel. The researchers noted that although there is life experience benefit to such trips, it is important to consider the real impact on the student’s learning development if these trips take place during school term time. Post Covid, there is a higher level of school refusal across all years of schooling – students who just do not want to go to school on a given day. The reasons can be diverse, from friendship issues to a feeling that school in person might be optional, but whatever they are, they need further investigation to understand what might drive such behaviour and choices.

If you are struggling to get your child to school for any reason, please reach out early to your child’s Class Teacher in Pre-school or Junior School or speak with your son’s House Mentor or Head of House in Senior School. It is so important that School and home work together as a team to help encourage regular, consistent attendance for all students. We know that being at school is such a powerful tool to help them make the most of every learning opportunity. It really does seem that even a day away does matter.

We look forward to a wonderful week of learning.

Kind wishes

Michele Marquet
Acting Head of School