Attendance

Please contact the attendance officer via phone 01225 785214 or email attendance@clarendonacademy.com before 8.45 am for every day of absence.

Students need to remember to sign-in at reception if they are late for school or if they are leaving school during the day, either for a medical appointment or other reasons. We would really appreciate medical and dental appointments not being made during the school day wherever possible. However, we understand that this is not always something that you can control. Afternoon appointments are best because students are likely to miss less of the school day.   As a school we only authorise a maximum of half a day for a single medical appointment; there are exceptions to this if a pupil is having a course of lengthy or specialist medical treatment.

Please provide evidence of this appointment to Reception. See our other FAQs to find out what constitutes as evidence. 

Evidence of absence can include but is not exclusive to the following:

• Text message/ email confirming a medical appointment
• Formal letter from GP or Hospital
• Confirmation of a positive LFT / PCR test (photo)
• Confirmation of prescribed medication clearly showing the name and date they were perscribed

The statutory marks for a student’s attendance are lesson 1 and lesson 5 – these make up the 100% attendance mark for the day.  If a student fails to attend before the registers close (9.15 am) they will lose their AM mark and therefore only be able to achieve 50% attendance for the day.  Students are also registered internally every lesson – during tutor time and periods 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 – for safeguarding reasons.

Yes it does. Period 1 (morning registration) starts at 8.45 am, and we expect all students to be in lesson and ready to learn by this time. Afternoon registers are taken at 2 pm (the start of period 5) and again, students are expected to be in lessons by this time. We record centrally any minutes late which a student accrues; there are a range of sanctions used to remind students of the importance of punctuality.

The Department for Education identifies attendance below 90% as ‘persistent absence’. If a pupil was to end the academic school year on 90% attendance, this would equate to four whole weeks off school. This would mean 20 days, or over 100 hours, of missed learning. The Heads of House monitor each student’s attendance very closely, and especially those who are at risk of falling into this category.  We write home to inform you when your child’s attendance drops to around the 95% level. Students whose level of attendance causes concern, either by falling below this level, or by dropping rapidly, will be invited into school, along with yourselves, to meet with the Head of House for a School Attendance Meeting (SAM). At this meeting we will look for opportunities to support an improvement in attendance; as a part of this process, internal attendance targets will be set.

Students who do not make an improvement in attendance following a SAM meeting, or those with a track record of weaker attendance, will be invited to a further formal meeting involving the Wiltshire Educational Welfare Officer and representatives from the school. These meetings set a formal set of attendance targets which, if not met, may lead to the prosecution of the parent/carer for failing to ensure adequate attendance of the child. Further details on the formal stages of our attendance procedures may be found in our Attendance Policy on the school website.

Guidance to Penaly Notices

We run various rewards for good attendance, linked to the Clarendon Rewards program. These include attendance fortnights, and tutor group and house ‘spot’ prizes. Students can also get reward points through either having 100% or improving attendance each week.

Please follow the link below for more details on exceptional circumstances:

Circumstances for Absence