Attendance
Attendance is key to academic success and prepares a student for their lives beyond school and into their future careers. Students enjoy their time at Hewens College for various reasons, so our attendance is good. We work hard with families to support their child’s attendance, especially on rare occasions their attendance is low.
In helping parents understand how we manage attendance, we created the School Attendance Guide for Parents, which can be downloaded here. This booklet covers all areas of attendance from leave of absence requests to legal proceedings and includes our approach to teaching students about the importance of punctuality.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact your child's Alliance Director or Form Tutor.
Reporting Absences
If your child cannot attend school, contact reception by 8.00am on the day of absence. You can do this by one of the following ways:
Email: HCattendance@trhat.org
Telephone: 020 8573 1039. Please ensure that you include your child's Full Name and Tutor Group in any communication.
If your child is absent from school for a medical reason or an appointment, we will require evidence to authorise the absence. Please note: Authorised absences will impact your child’s overall attendance.
Punctuality
Punctuality is a key life skill for students that translates into the working world, and we strive to ensure students are in good habits from a young age.
All students are expected to arrive at school by 8:30am and be in their tutor's room at 8:45am. Students arriving at school after 8.45am will be marked as late.
It is recommended that travel routes to school are planned to ensure students arrive on time.
The Importance of Excellent Attendance
The general guidance for excellent attendance is that students should attend school at least 96% of the time. This equates to no more than 8 days of absence across an academic year. Below is a summary table which shows how many lessons your child will miss for high levels of absence during the academic year.
ATTENDANCE MATTERS
Getting your child into college really matters. Did you know...
ATTENDANCE MATTERS: EVERYDAY COUNTS
Attendance below 90% attendance (approximately 19 days (about 2 and a half weeks) or more of absence across an academic year), is classed by the government as “Persistent Absence” and without sufficient evidence to explain this level of absence, families are open to intervention by the local authority, in this case the London Borough of Hillingdon.
The effective implementation of the attendance policy, together with the more general work of the school in ensuring that every student has the best possible learning experience, should ensure that student attendance is high. It is proven by numerous studies that regular attendance at school will help your child get the most from their education and that pupils who attend regularly are likely to develop both academically and socially, leave school with more qualifications, improve their life chances and have greater access to employment opportunities. For these reasons, staff members monitor punctuality and attendance at Hewens College and act on attendance patterns.
Accordion Title
The Department for Education (DfE) has published a new version of Working together to improve school attendance. This became statutory guidance on 19 August 2024.
The school’s policy for attendance creates effective systems and procedures for encouraging regular school attendance, investigating and resolving the underlying causes of poor attendance and for the early identification of persistently absent students and the prevention of their absence.
The school's Stages of Intervention to support improving attendance can be found here: Attendance Flowchart
Penalty Notices
The school works closely with the London Borough of Hillingdon's Attendance Support Team to consider whether the issuing of a penalty notice is appropriate for each individual case where the student reaches the national threshold for consideration.
This is:
10 sessions of unauthorised absence in a rolling period of 10 school weeks. Each school day has 2 sessions (a morning and afternoon session)
This can be met with any combination of unauthorised absence
(e.g. 4 sessions of holiday taken in term time plus 6 sessions of arriving late after the register closes all within 10 school weeks)
The summary of the changes to the issuing of penalty notices can be found here.
Penalty Notice Fines for School Attendance are changing!
Leave of Absence Requests
For every planned absence, we request a Leave of Absence (LOA) request form to be completed at least 4 weeks before the absence.
The Leave of Absence request form can be accessed here. (link to request form) Printed copies can also be collected from the school's reception.
Each Leave of Absence request form must be fully completed with reasons (and attached evidence where appropriate). We do not approve a Leave of Absence unless there are exceptional circumstances (one-off events which are unavoidable). Family holidays or trips abroad, particularly towards the end of term, will not be counted as exceptional.
The school considers each application for term-time absence individually, considering the specific facts, circumstances and relevant context behind the request.
Policies and Guides
