Attendance

Term 4, Week 6

We are now halfway into Term 4, with Year 11 VCE students starting their end-of-year Unit 2 examinations, followed by our Year 10 students in the coming weeks. As we near the point where some of our year levels will wrap up for the year, it is as good a time as any to reflect on the year thus far, especially in the area of attendance.

This graph displays each year level's average weekly attendance for each week of the year, right up until last week (Term 4, Week 5). You may notice some key points where only one year level dips in their attendance. These have usually coincided with a camp or a major change to the normal curriculum program for that week.

For example, you can see in Term 1, Week 7, that Year 10 attendance drops down below 50%. This was the week when the Year 10 camp occurred; camp attendees are counted as 'attending school' whereas those who did not attend the camp largely did not come to school that week.

The solid red bar across the graph indicates the minimum attendance as outlined in our College Attendance Policy: https://www.edgarscreeksc.vic.edu.au/policies/

At Years 7 and 8, the 90% requirement applies to average attendance across the whole academic year.

At Years 9 to 12, the 90% requirement applies to average attendance in each subject, and in VCE, this is an essential part of a student's ability to pass in their chosen subjects.

What if my child needs to be away? As a school, we are legally required to account for students who should be attending during normal school hours. If your child needs to be absent from school for any reason, it is important that you log this on Compass. Compass has a quick visual guide explaining how to do this: https://www.compass.education/guide

Unfortunately, each year level is tracking below this minimum requirement. On average, year levels are sitting at around 80% attendance - which by the end of the year, would mean around 160 days of attendance. This would equate to 40 days - or 8 academic weeks of absence. Put another way, 72% of one term - or 20% of the entire academic year - would have been missed due to absence.

The impact of this rate of absence, whether due to illness, holidays, or other reasons, is profound on a student's academic growth. Substituting in-person, differentiated, targeted teaching with occasional engagement online when a student is away, removes the opportunity for that student to engage directly with their teacher about concepts that they are struggling with, or to access extension tasks. While work is always posted onto Google Classroom for students to access, even while away, those students are still missing out on the direct instruction and support from their teacher that they would enjoy while in the classroom.

Anthony Asta