Attendance

Healdswood Infant & Nursery School

Vision for Attendance

Together - “Every Day Counts — Every Child Thrives”

At Healdswood Infant & Nursery School, we believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life and attending school every day is a vital part of that journey. Achieving excellent attendance is a shared responsibility between school and families. By working together, we can ensure children develop positive routines, feel secure in their learning environment, and benefit fully from the opportunities school provides.

Our vision is to create a nurturing, inclusive environment where children feel safe, valued and excited to learn each day, and where parents and carers play a key role in supporting their child’s daily attendance and readiness for learning.

Our Core Beliefs

Attendance is a shared commitment — between staff, governors, parents, carers and the wider community all playing an important role in ensuring children attend daily and on time.
Parents and carers make the difference – establishing strong daily routines and prioritising school attendance helps children develop lifelong positive habits.
Every child deserves the best start - By working together with families and other professionals, we use empathy, practical support and early intervention to address barriers to attendance quickly and prevent patterns of absence from developing.
Belonging drives attendance — children who feel connected, supported, and successful want to be in school.

Our Aims

To inspire a love of learning through engaging, creative and relevant experiences, while nurturing wellbeing so every child feels safe, supported and excited to come to school every day.
To work in partnership with parents and carers to promote excellent attendance and establish strong daily routines.
To remove barriers to attendance by supporting families and connecting them with community services where needed.
To celebrate attendance success at individual, class, and whole-school levels in a positive, child-friendly ways.
To communicate, clearly and consistently, with families about the importance of attendance and the impact of missed learning.

Our Commitment

We will listen without judgment to families and offer help and support.
We will work closely with parents, carers and other professionals to understand and overcome barriers to attendance, building trusting relationships that encourage open dialogue, support and appropriate challenge around attendance and wellbeing
We will use attendance information carefully to identify patterns early and interventions ensuring that ‘Every Day Counts – Every Child Thrives’.
We will model high expectations and a culture of care, where being in school is celebrated and valued by staff parents and children.

Our Vision in Action

We want every child to start each day with a smile, eager to learn and proud to belong. By working together—school staff, governors, parents, carers and the wider community—we build positive attendance habits through empathy, consistency and strong partnerships, helping every child thrive and achieve their full potential and develop an enduring love of learning.

Together we will make every day count and every child will thrive

We launched our new attendance vision in April 2026 and shared it with parents through a vision launch assembly.

Below is the PowerPoint shared with parents.

Here are the things our children said they would miss if they did not come to school...

Our target is that all children should attend school for at least 95% of the time.

Expectations

Parents are expected to:

Provide the school with up to date home and emergency contact details.
Ensure their child attends school regularly, as is their legal duty as parents.
Contact the school on the first and each subsequent day of absence, unless a definite date of return is known.
Parents should offer reasons for absence but whether or not the absence is marked as authorised is a decision that can only be made by the school.
Ensure their child arrives at school on time, well prepared for the school day. School opens at 8:45am for an early drop off and a prompt start at 9.00am. Classroom doors are locked at 9.00am. Morning Nursery should arrive by 8.35am and afternoon nursery by 12.20pm.
Contact the school in confidence whenever any problems occur that may affect their child’s attendance or performance in school.
In some circumstances, provide evidence from a medical professional for prolonged absence (also see Unauthorised Absence).

Parents and children can expect the following from school:

Regular and prompt recording of attendance.
Early contact with parents when a child doesn’t attend school without providing a good reason.
The use of a computerised system to record registers (Arbor) to ensure consistency across the school.
Rewards for good and improved attendance.
Students with attendance below 95%, whether absences are authorised or not, will be closely monitored. Any children arriving after 9:30am, when the register has closed, without a reasonable explanation will be marked with a ‘U’ code which counts as an unauthorised absence for the morning session. Any child arriving between 9.10am and 9.30am will be marked with an ‘L’ for ‘Lateness’. Please see our “Lateness and Punctuality” section for more information on this.
Home visit- The Local Authority Advice is as follows:

‘Visiting parents/carers and students at their homes is a reasonable and suitable response to attendance concerns. It will often be the first contact with a family and will establish a line of communication and hopefully form a positive working relationship’. (Notts County Council - Improving School Attendance: A Toolkit for Maintained schools, August 2021).

Parent attendance leaflet

Unauthorised Absences

As per our “Expectations”, parents should contact the school on the first and each subsequent day of absence, unless a definite date of return is known. If parents do not contact the school within 24 hours of an absence then this will be marked as unauthorised.

If your child has been absent for 3 days or more with either illness or unauthorised absence over a 6 week rolling period, it would be really helpful if you could provide any evidence for any dates that your child may have be absent for so we can formally authorise them. This could be 3 consecutive days or 3 separate days over a 6 week period. However, as mentioned previously, whether or not the absence is marked as authorised is still a decision that can only be made by the school.

Where your child has been absent due to attending a medical appointment, the school must receive evidence in order for this to be approved. This could be a letter detailing an appointment or could simply be an appointment card/ email / text message. Parents are encouraged to contact the school if they are unsure as to what qualifies as ‘evidence’.

Holidays in Term Time

The Government outlines:

You must get permission from the head teacher if you want to take your child out of school during term time. You can only do this if:

You make an application to the head teacher in advance (as a parent the child normally lives with).
There are exceptional circumstances.
It will be up to the head teacher’s discretion how many days your child can be away from school or if leave is granted.

Please see: https://www.gov.uk/school -attendance-absence

The Local Authority outlines:

The law states that for your child to be considered to attend school regularly they must be at school every day they are required to be there by the head teacher. This was confirmed in a Supreme Court ruling in 2017.
The head teacher will decide whether to agree the leave of absence and whether this is marked as authorised or unauthorised in the attendance register.
Please note that head teachers are only permitted to agree a leave of absence in term time for exceptional circumstances.

Please visit: www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/education/school -discipline -and -exclusions/attendance -absence -truancy for more information on this.

Healdswood Attendance & Punctuality Policy

Healdswood Infant and Nursery School