Principal's Report

Attendance at School

One of our areas of focus for 2020 is around school attendance. Being at school each day at 9 am is vital for the growth and achievement of all students and as a school, we have a collective responsibility to maintain high attendance. 

 

All students are expected at school, at 9 am, every day of the school year. There will be times where due to illness students have a legitimate reason for being absent from school, however, we encourage students to be at school when they have a slight cold or sniffle as this develops an understanding that being at school is important to you as a parent or family, and that school is something that is part of their everyday lives. 

 

Our school policy outlines that any student whose attendance is below 90% for the year is deemed to have chronic absences from school, and this is in line with the Department of Education's expectations.

In 2019, we had 24% of our school reach this benchmark of chronic absence, telling us that a quarter of our students missed 20 days or more of school last year. While 20 days out of 200 may seem few, and we will have students for whom due to extenuating situations have been absent for this many days, this is a large number in any given year.  We already have a number of students who are below 90% attendance for this year, something that can turn around as the year moves forward.

 

At parent/teacher interviews in the last week of term teaching will be bringing up attendance rates with families for students who are sitting below this benchmark where we do not know of the reason for absence this year. 

Parent/Teacher chats

For students in years 1-6 our Term 1 reporting chat will be taking place on Wednesday, March 25th. Next week the booking system will be open to families to make an appointment to see their classroom teacher.  Notification about this will occur through Compass. 

 

These are opportunities for your child's teacher to report on how they have begun the year and the progress they have made, but are only 10 minutes in length. If you have concerns around your child, these should be brought to the immediate attention of your child's teacher with a meeting, phone conversation or email conversation taking place as soon as possible.