The law on school attendance

Parents are expected to: Ensure their child attends every day that the school is open.

The law on school attendance and right to a full-time education

The law entitles every child of compulsory school age to an efficient, full-time education suitable to their age, aptitude, and any special educational need they may have. It is the legal responsibility of every parent to make sure their child receives that education either by attendance at a school or by education otherwise than at a school.

Where parents decide to have their child registered at school, they have an additional legal duty to ensure their child attends that school regularly. This means their child must attend every day that the school is open, except in a small number of allowable circumstances such as being too ill to attend or being given permission for an absence in advance from the school.

For some children, attending school every day will be harder than for others. This is why schools, and local councils in some cases, are committed to working together with families to solve problems and support your child's school attendance. The guide linked below, from the Department for Education, provides the following guidance for parents/carers:

• Parent responsibilities for school attendance and what you need to do when your child needs to be absent.
• How schools and local authorities will work with you to support your child's attendance.

 Working Together to Improve School Attendance

How attendance is calculated? 

Attendance is measured by the number of sessions a child is in school. There are two sessions a day and a register is taken once in the morning and once in the afternoon. There are 10 sessions in a school week, children must attend all 10 sessions each week to achieve 100% attendance.

Schools use a system that calculates how many times a child was expected to be in school and how many they were in school for. This gives the school an attendance percentage for each child.

It is vitally important that children must arrive in school before the close of  the registers – the time this happens varies from school to school. All schools are expected to set out in their attendance policy the length of time the register will be open, after which a pupil will be recorded as absent. This should be the same for every session and not longer than 30 minutes.  Schools should actively discourage late arrival and be alert to patterns of late arrival. Arrival after the close of registers will be treated as an absence for the morning or afternoon session.