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Attendance

Regular attendance is essential if students are to achieve their full potential. 

The Trust believes that regular academy attendance is the key to enabling students to maximise the educational opportunities available to them, and for them to become resilient, confident and competent adults who can realise their full potential and make positive contributions to their community.

The Trust values all students, and we will support families to identify the reasons for unsatisfactory attendance and try to work together to resolve any difficulties.

Our Attendance Policy provides a full overview of what is expected from our students and families and in return what you can expect from us.  However, the Policy should not be viewed in isolation; it is a strand that runs through all the aspects of school improvement, supported by our policies on safeguarding, bullying, behaviour and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (“SEND”).

Our Attendance Policy aims:

  • To ensure that students, parents and carers understand the importance of full attendance in their academy;
  • To ensure that students, parents and carers understand the detrimental effect of absence on a student’s academic progress.

As a Trust our academies will recognise that poor attendance may be an indicator of underlying issues that need resolving either inside or outside the Academy.  Our Academies work with families to prioritise student attendance and will ensure student attendance is seen as a benchmark of the culture of the Trust.

Attendance unsurprisingly plays a huge role in student outcomes. Department for Education research shows that overall absence throughout secondary school has a negative link to attainment, with every extra day missed associated with a lower chance of achieving 5 or more good GCSEs.

This is what our own internal data shows too, which is real world outcomes against attendance for students across the Rodillian Multi Academy Trust. Our data shows that students with 100% attendance achieve on average around 2½ grades higher outcomes than students who have an overall attendance of below 90%. Whilst this may seem obvious if students are missing the equivalent of a day off every 2 weeks, every drop in attendance from 100%-90% shows a dramatic drop in outcomes too. Even students with an overall attendance of 98% achieve nearly ½ a grade on average lower outcomes than students on 100%. The drop to students below 95% attendance is nearly a whole grade lower on average.

Whilst some absence is unavoidable, we cannot stress enough the importance of attending and its impact on students' success.