From Ms Allum

Attendance at School 

As you would be aware, attendance at school is a legal requirement for every student under the age of 17. When students attend school every day for the full day, learning is easier, your daughter will develop important life skills such as resilience and perspective, and build stronger connections with her peers. With this in mind, families are asked to travel during school holidays and not during term time. This will ensure that the cumulative effect of your daughter’s unexpected absences (such as when she is sick or attending a funeral) is not further compounded by even more absences that could have occurred during non-term time.

I have been concerned about the increased number of absences during term-time without prior permission. We will be tightening up generally attendance at School, and we will only be granting leave in rare circumstances. We do already report unapproved absences on School Reports, and we are considering other ways to make attendance rates for individual students clearer, aiming to reduce absence rates across the board.

Non-attendance at school for any reason is associated with poorer outcomes for students, academically and socially. These are included in the diagram below:

There are many students at SCEGGS who do attend school more than 95% of the time (ie they are absent for no more than 1 or 2 days each term) and this is an attendance level that we think many more students and families should strive to achieve. Every day at school counts and we hope to see an improvement in school attendance for the rest of this year and beyond.  

For more information about our school guidelines for student absence applications at SCEGGS, please refer to the Parent Information Booklet available in the Parent Portal. 

We do want our girls to be present at school throughout the school year to provide every student with the opportunity to achieve their best and to flourish. We hope you will continue to support us in making attendance at school, all day, every day, the highest priority.

Jenny Allum
Head of School