From the first day of term to the last, the small moments in a school day make a real difference to your child. Our school is part of a national campaign to remind parents and carers of the importance of school attendance. #schoolreadylifeready.

Frequent absence can add up to a considerable amount of lost learning and can seriously disadvantage your child in adult life.

• 5 minutes late every day means around 3 ½ days of education are missed
• a score of 90% in a test would be a good result but 90% attendance means that a child will have missed around 100 lessons over a school year.

The majority of our students are on time to school every day. Thank you for your ongoing support in ensuring that your daughter attends school on time every day. Lesson 1 begins promptly at 8:45am, which means that your daughter needs to be in her seat waiting for the register to be taken by 08:40am.

Students who are late, without a valid reason, will sit in a 30 minute after school detention on the same day.

Absence disrupts the education of the individual pupil and the whole class. Are you aware those children who do not attend regularly:

• do not achieve well in exams
• find it difficult to maintain friendships
• are more likely to become involved in crime
• miss out on opportunities in further education and the world of work?

Please be advised that term-time holidays are very unlikely to be approved. If families ignore this the absence will be unauthorised and you will be at risk of receiving a £160 Fixed Penalty Notice per parent on your return.

Last term, 36 parents have received Penalty Notices for taking students on unauthorised leave in term time.

Please note that, Birmingham City Council strongly discourages pupil leave of absence during term time. The expectation is that such leave would only be authorised in the most exceptional circumstance.

Please ensure that leave is taken in the school holidays only.

Regular attendance is seen as very important at King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls Academy. Every opportunity is taken by the school to encourage all pupils to come to school regularly. We have a designated pastoral team who work closely with our families and support them with attendance concerns.

Our Attendance Strategy is available on the Statutory Information and Important Documents section of the website.

Please see the information in the ‘Reporting your child’s absence’ tab above

Parents are advised to avoid booking medical and dental appointments during school hours so that your daughter’s learning is not disrupted. In terms of medical appointments and evidence we would like all parents to share key information such as medical letters, appointment information by sending the information to attendance@hwga.org.uk in advance of any appointments.

We use the Arbor App to report absences.

You can download the Android version of the App from the Play Store, and the Apple version of the App from the App Store.

In order to report absence through the Arbor Parent Portal APP, go to the home page of the Arbor app.

To record an absence, click on the Quick Actions button and then click Attendance.

From here click the green Log Absence button in the top-right of the page. 

You can input a start and end time for the absence and type in the reason for the absence giving as much detail as possible.

By default, the absence start and end times reflect the student’s full day, but these can be adjusted as needed if a student will only be absent for a short time as a result of an appointment. Once you have filled in all this data, click ‘Log Absence’ and this will be visible to the school attendance team.

Please note that informing the school is a key responsibility of parents/carers. When staff from both the attendance and safeguarding team take time out of their day to chase families, it detracts from the support we can offer to students in school.

Therefore, please ensure all reports are made by 8.30am and the school are informed every day that a student is absent.

Where possible, please give plenty of notice for any planned absence, for example hospital appointments by using the Arbor parent portal app or by emailing attendance@hwga.org.uk.

By working together, we can help students reach their full potential and make the most of the opportunities school has to offer.

If you feel you would like support with your child’s attendance or well-being, please do not hesitate to their Head of Year.

King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls’ Academy attendance last year, was significantly above national figures. The school has worked closely with parents to ensure the highest levels of attendance and the while school target is above 97%. The school follows the Local Authority procedures for attendance and please see below the relevant information that all parents and carers must read:

The school is keen to work in partnership with pupils, parents and external agencies where necessary to ensure educational entitlement and regular attendance. The taking of holidays during the school terms is strongly discouraged, it is hoped that parents will help in the following ways:

1. Not letting their daughter take time off school for minor ailments
2. Arranging appointments and outings after school hours, or as late as possible in the afternoon, at weekends or during school holidays
3. Not taking holidays during term time. The importance of regular attendance is emphasised in the table below:

As a maintained school we follow all local education authority guidelines which can include fining parents and court action when necessary as detailed below:

Schools can fine parents for the unauthorised absence of their child from school, where the child is of compulsory school age. If issued with a penalty notice, parents must pay £60 within 21 days or £120 within 28 days. The payment must be made directly to the local authority. The decision on whether or not to issue a penalty notice ultimately rests with the headteacher, following the local authority’s code of conduct for issuing penalty notices.

Schools can fine parents for the unauthorised absence of their child from school, where the child is of compulsory school age. If issued with a penalty notice, it will be £160 per child per parent, to be paid within 28 days. However, if paid within 21 days it will be reduced to £80 per child per parent.