Parent’s responsibility - If your child is poorly, please can you telephone school on each morning that your child will not be attending school, to let us know.  Your call will be received by a member of school’s office staff who will ask you:-

• Your child’s name
• The reason for absence
• The expected duration of absence (if known)
• Our phone number is 01642 770540

School’s responsibility - If we do not have a message, then we will contact you by phone to see why he or she is absent.  If we are unable to speak to you, we may ask our Family Liaison Officer to call round to check that everything is OK and to see if we can be of any help, if there is a problem.  We need to know that all of our children are safe and well.  We fully understand that many of our children and young people have complex medical conditions which mean they cannot come to school because they are too poorly and we are sensitive to this.  We know that even the healthiest of children can become ill.  However, we really want your children to come to school to enable them to achieve and make the best possible progress and if we feel that their attendance could be improved, we will seek to work with you and offer support to help their attendance to improve.

Vomiting/sickness and diarrhoea - Please note that we do operate the 48 hour rule with regards to vomiting/sickness and diarrhoea.  If your child has experienced vomiting/sickness or diarrhoea, they must not return to school until 48 hours after the last time they have had an episode of either vomiting/sickness or diarrhoea, even if they seem better in themselves.  This is to reduce widespread infection and is in line with advice from Public Health England.

Medical appointments - We need to know of any medical appointments which will result in your child’s absence from school. You can inform us by:-

• Putting a note in their school diary
• Sending the appointment letter in to school (which will be photocopied and returned to you)
• Telephoning school on 01642 770540

We also understand that many of our children have lots of medical appointments and that these will often be in school time.  When this is the case, please can you make sure that they are absent only for the time the appointment takes?  For example, if the appointment is at 10:00am, then they could come back to school afterwards, or if the appointment was at 2:00pm, then he or she could be collected after lunch.  We understand that not all appointments are in local hospitals and that this may not always be possible.  Equally, your child may be undergoing some treatments which would make coming back to school impossible.