Attendance

Attendance = Success

Attendance continues to be a focus for Edgars Creek Secondary College, especially as we are well and truly into the wintery months that tend to see a spike in colds, the flu and other illnesses, including COVID.

We acknowledge that the Victorian Government's advice around preventing the further spread of illnesses, especially COVID, remains that you should stay home if you have COVID symptoms. This, of course, has some impact on the rate of attendance, but in a larger, community sense, helps prevent further absences by halting the virus' spread.

Visit coronavirus.vic.gov.au to learn more about the Victorian Government's latest COVID advice.

Lateness & Early Departures

Average attendance for each period on each day of the week (2023) as of July 20, 2023

Two major factors that impact attendance are:

low levels of attendance for home group
early departure from school, especially on a Friday

Missing Home Group

Home group is an important part of our current timetable structure, as it is the opportunity for important messages for the day ahead to be passed onto students, as well as a time that students can prepare for the day ahead.

As the graph above shows, home group attendance is around 9-10% on average lower than for the other periods of the day. Home group, and therefore, the school day, starts at 8.50am.

Early Departures

While overall, Mondays and Fridays are, on average, days of lower attendance, it is clear that some students are being picked up early each day after lunch. This is a significant concern as it means that students are missing large amounts of learning.

Leaving early on a Friday alone each week would result in missing 80 periods of class (equivalent to 13 school days) of learning in a school year. Students could be missing a class from any one of these subjects: English, Maths, Science, Humanities, the Arts, Technology, Health & PE or languages.

If this were reflected on several other days in the week, this could equate to 240 periods of class missed over the year, equating to 40 days of missed learning. This has a direct impact on student learning and achievement.

Attendance equals success.

Kind regards,

Anthony Asta

Acting Assistant Principal - School Operations