Attendance
Consistent school attendance from the early years is fundamental to ensuring children gain a strong foundation for later learning.
LATE ARRIVALS
Currently we have an average of 30-40 (15-20%) of our children arriving late (after 8:55am) every morning, for many this is only a few minutes after the bell, but these need to recorded as late arrivals. Parents and caregivers should be signing in children that arrive late at the front office, so their lateness is not recorded as unexplained.
When children arrive after 8:55am they miss our very important morning routines, this includes: hearing the daily routine, special events or activities, changes to their timetables, roll call and targeted reading and literacy intervention programs. Arriving late also means they miss the opportunity to connect to their friendship groups and share important information with teachers.
Multiple unexplained late arrivals also adds significant pressure at the front desk in the morning, we want to be able to provide an excellent service to our families who need to pay accounts or have questions answered. If we can reduce the number of late arrivals to only the emergency cases, we can offer a better service to families.
We understand there are times when it is unavoidable that a child will be late but we ask that our parents and carers come into the office and sign them in to avoid the unexplained lateness.
Our current attendance rate for the last fortnight is:
The department has adopted the following definitions consistent with best practice to identify students at risk through non-attendance:
• Habitual non-attendance where a student has 5 to 9 absences for any reason in a term (average of 1 day per fortnight).
• Chronic non-attendance where a student is absent for 10 days or more in a term for any reason (average of 1 day per week).
If your child is absent or late for any reason, please notify the school in writing by messaging the class teacher on Class Dojo or emailing the school on: dl.0272.admin@schools.sa.edu.au
