Attendance and The School Day

Learning Time Over a Week

Light Oaks Junior School have a compulsory school week of just over 32.5 hours. This is made up of 6 hours and 35 minutes per day = 32 hours and 55 minutes.

Timings

The school is open for all children at 8:45am.  Compulsory attendance starts at 8.55am and finishes at 3.30pm.  The register closes at 9:30am and children arriving after this time will be marked absent. 

Due to the number of pupils in the school, our breaks and lunchtimes are different for each year group.

Mid Morning Snack

Pupils may bring in fruit and a small, non-fizzy drink for snack time. Please ask at reception for more information about purchasing milk for breaktimes. 

School Meals

Children can choose to have either a school dinner or packed lunch. School dinners are prepared from fresh ingredients on site each day and provide a hot, nourishing meal. Children are offered a choice of dishes with at least one vegetarian option. Those who bring a packed lunch are encouraged to have a balanced meal including fruit and salad or vegetables. Guidance here.  Fizzy drinks are not allowed.

Collective Worship

We have an act of collective worship every day. This follows the guidelines set out by the Department for Education. We have whole school assembly on Monday and Tuesday with Phase Assemblies on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Within our assemblies, we begin shared conversations about wellbeing issues, explore national and international days of reflection and religious festivals. Each assembly contains an act of worship within which we celebrate all faiths and none. Quiet time is observed to raise pupils’ spiritual awareness and whilst we encourage prayer, we also allow pupils to reflect, rather than worship in any particular way. Our policy for collective worship can be found on the policies page. Each week ends with an achievement assembly, run by our House Captains.  This is a celebration of all that the children and adults in our school have achieved during the week.

What is good attendance?

Children need to be in school all day, every day.  Our aim is for every child to be in school 100% of the time, but we recognise that children can get ill and so we want all children to have at least 97% attendance.  

So what does that mean?

A few days off here and there might seem OK and attendance figures can seem misleading.  For example, 90% attendance might sound quite acceptable but what that means in reality is:

• on average half a day’s school missed every week
• in one year, four weeks of schooling missed
• across the junior school, 4 months of schooling missed or a full term
• 

This Blog from the DfE outlines the benefit of good attendance; Why is School Attendance so Important?

What can I do?

• Be positive - tell your child they will be OK and that school will take their mind off any sniffle or worry and that teachers are here to help.
• Encourage good attendance and bring your child in - we can send them home if they are really unwell.
• Get children to school as much as possible - minor illnesses can be dealt with in school.  See this NHS site for information.
• Keep a tally of days off - can you keep it less than 5 days across the year?  
• If your child is too ill to come to school, make sure they come back as soon as possible - just because they've had Wednesday and Thursday off, they can still come back in on Friday!
• Half a day off is better than a full day off.  If you have got up late, or your child gets better in the afternoon - you can still bring them in.  We will welcome children in to school at any time during the school day, and we will make sure they can join in as soon as they are here - just bring them to the school office and we can do the rest!
• Come and speak to us - whether you are finding it tough to persuade a child to come to school, if they have lots of illnesses or if they are anxious or have friendship worries, come in and speak to us, or give us a call.  There are lots of things we can do to help.
• Only take holidays in official holiday time - whilst we understand the cost savings of term-time holidays low attendance can have a life-time impact on your child and we cannot grant time out of school.

How we can help

• We have senior leaders on the door every morning, so you can talk to us about any problems and we can come up with a plan of action together to help your child come into school.
• We can administer medicines in school, and we will keep an eye on any child who may be a bit under the weather.
• We will try to keep in touch with you when your child is off and we will help them catch up any missed learning.
• We can offer to help with issues such as anxiety, behaviour, friendships and other issues children may be experiencing which impacts on their attendance.
• We can offer referrals to the school nurse, housing, counselling and other agencies through our Early Help process - and someone from school can be with you every step of the way.