Dear Parents/Carers,
9 for year 9- attendance incentive!
As you will be aware, we maintain unapologetically high expectations and this includes your child’s attendance. Attending the academy every day is crucial to your child’s success in class assessments, but more importantly to prepare them for their year 11 and 13 final exams. The Department for Education suggests that if attendance falls below 96%, attainment is negatively affected. Even for high-achieving students poor attendance has a significant negative impact on their grades. It has been shown that missing just 17 days of school a year reduces final GCSE grades by one grade across all subjects. This could easily prevent your child from getting an apprenticeship or into the university or career of their choice.
I wrote to you in module 1 and informed you of an attendance incentive that was taking place for year 9 students. This was incredibly positive and our attendance figure for this year group improved significantly! I also spoke to you at the Year 9 Gateway event regarding incentives that were upcoming for the year 9 students this academic year, but also into KS4.
Starting on Monday and continuing for the final 9 days of the module, year 9 students are going to be given an attendance incentive card. Every day that they are present, they are going to receive a stamp from their form tutor. If they gain 9 stamps, on the final day of the module (Thursday 12th February), students are going to be invited to exchange their card to celebrate with free doughnuts at lunch time! This is an exclusive year 9 incentive and we hope that students are excited by this new reward!
Thank you for your support in ensuring your child’s attendance to school is as high as possible. You can access your child’s up to date attendance figure on MCAS. Please discuss your child’s current attendance figure with them regularly and agree how you can work together to ensure that this figure is as high as possible.
If you have any queries about attendance figures, illness, penalty notices, medical evidence etc then please refer to our policy on the academy website. Please also email attendance@strood.latrust.org.uk for any further queries.
Yours faithfully,
Mrs G West
Assistant Principal- Attendance
