Absenteeism Questionnaire

St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School, Bognor Regis, UK

1) What are the absenteeism rates at your school from 2012-2012?

The issue with absenteeism in our school is that children who have English as a second

language (EAL) miss more school than other children.

I have tracked the end of year attendance for all of our reception children (what you call pre-

schoolers) each year from 2009. Results show a trend of lower attendance for EAL children.

2) What are the main reasons for absenteeism of ‘pre-schoolers’ at our school?

a) Illness and extended holidays taken during term time, some of which are authorised by

the Head Teacher and some which are unauthorised.

b) The parents say their children are sick or ask to take holidays. Often, they will say the

holiday is necessary because their relatives back home in their native country are sick.

The truth is that it is cheaper in Britain to go on holiday during term time rather than

during school holidays.

c) The children tell us the same as the parents, they are quite honest about going on

holiday.

3) Which reason is given the most often for absence?

Illness and holidays.

4) What measures have we taken to decrease absenteeism?

The Head Teacher no longer authorises holidays during term time and parents are more

aware that good attendance at school is important. We emphasised this importance at our

‘new parent’s evening’ before the children started school and again at our ‘six weeks in’

parent’s meeting.

5) What other social activities do we have to make our school more attractive to ‘pre-

schoolers’?

We have many events planned throughout the year which invite parents in to school to

watch shows, see the children as they are working and discuss their next steps of learning.

Our curriculum is personalised to the interests of the children in each class. Through working

closely with the parents and children, we establish the children’s interests and preferences

and design the topics around them. For example this year I have many boys who love using

construction toys to build robots, so I developed a whole topic about robots. This term the

children have shown interest in animals and insects, so we are having a topic called ‘Brilliant

bugs!’

We have many fun days and charity days in school where children can come dressed up or

take part in exciting activities and we invite many interesting visitors to our school.

6) What are our expectations from the Smileys project and what will we gain from it?

We expect to make new links with others around the world who also value early education. We feel

that a document for parents which ,not only shows that we in the UK think attendance is important,

but other countries do too, might convince those parents who think it isn’t important.

Our partnership will add another dimension to our school, offering something else that is an exciting

prospect for the children.