And now a word from 

Mrs Richards...

Good punctuality at school is essential for students to achieve their full educational potential. It is also vital for students to form good habits for later life. Punctuality and good time management are skills demanded by employers across all industries. That's because being late has the ability to negatively affect whole teams, disrupting meetings and giving yourself and others a reputation for being unprofessional.

Being punctual for school means making sure your child is at school and ready to learn before the bell rings. There are many ways to ensure your child is on time for school, from making sure their school bags are packed the night before to making sure they get up with plenty of time to eat and get ready. Lost minutes mean lost learning. A student who is just 10 minutes late each day misses the equivalent of 33.3 hours of learning each year.  A student who is half an hour late each day misses the equivalent of 15.3 days of learning each year.

Arriving at school late can be stressful for children as they miss important instructions that are given at the beginning of the lesson.  Being late doesn’t only affect your child, it disrupts other children in the class as well as the teachers trying to teach a lesson. A great analogy is arriving late to a movie.  Not only do you miss all of the shorts, you can miss the beginning of the movie and therefore not fully understand the plot.  You also inconvenience other theatre goers as you shuffle past them to get to your seat and then distract them with the noise of settling into your seat, taking off your coat/jacket and opening your packets of movie snacks. 

Respect is one of our Super Six Values and punctuality displays a person's respect for people and time.

Being on time:

• Gets your day off to a good start and puts you in a positive frame of mind so that you can make the most of your learning opportunities.
• Sets positive patterns for the future. 
• Leads to improved academic achievement.
• Reinforces an understanding that school is important and education is valuable.
• Helps you to develop a sense of responsibility for yourself and towards others.
• Is respectful to the teacher and other children in the class.

Sometimes unavoidable things happen that can make us late but when it does it is important that we make every effort to move with purpose and limit our lateness.  I would also ask you to consider what you would do if you were late yourself to an event or a meeting, or even to your own work. I am positive you would begin, as I would, with an apology for being late and then moving quietly into the space so as not to disrupt those already there. It is a good habit to instil in your children early.