The St Nic's family working together to improve attendance...

Welcome to our information page about attendance at St Nicholas. We hope you find our webpage useful.  If you need any further information about attendance, please contact our Attendance Lead - Mrs Slack by emailing admin3146@welearn365.com.

You can also view our Attendance Policy by clicking on this link -

 /docs/Attendance_Policy_Sept_2025.pdf

School day details

Children can come into school from 8.40 to allow a calm start to the school day and MUST be in by 8.50am.

Lunchtime is from 12 - 1

The school day ends at 3.20pm.

The Importance of school attendance -

At St Nicholas, every child is unique, loved by God, and capable of reaching their potential. Guided by our vision—Aim high. Be courageous. Show love—we want pupils to flourish academically, socially, and spiritually in a safe, inclusive community.

Regular attendance supports children’s learning, wellbeing, friendships, and future success. Absence limits academic, social, and emotional growth. High attainment depends on good attendance.

Attendance is also a protective factor: it helps identify needs early and ensures support and safeguarding for pupils, especially the most vulnerable. If a child is not in school, their safety and learning may be at risk.

Promoting attendance is a shared responsibility across our school community. Our Attendance Policy works alongside our Safeguarding, Behaviour & Relationships, and SEND policies to ensure every child is supported to thrive.

Our aims to work together to improve attendance -

As a school, we aim to support pupils and their families in improving attendance and punctuality by fostering positive relationships and working in partnership. We are committed to being proactive, supportive, and understanding — listening to parents and children to identify barriers to attendance and collaborating to remove those barriers.

We will meet our obligations regarding school attendance through a whole-school culture and ethos that values good attendance, by:

• Setting high expectations for the attendance and punctuality of all pupils
• Promoting good attendance
• Reducing absence, including persistent and severe absence
• Ensuring every pupil has access to the full-time education to which they are entitled
• Acting early to address patterns of absence
• Building strong relationships with families so pupils have the support needed to attend school
• Realising our expectation of achieving the annual whole-school target of 96% attendance

Procedure for reporting absence - 

We expect parents to report absences and provide reasons for absence using the following ways:

Email – admin3146@welearn365.com

Study Bugs – sending a message via the Study Bugs app

Phone – telephoning the school office on 01926 853257

If a child is absent from school, parents must follow these procedures:

• Contact the school on the first day of absence by 9.30am.
• Contact the school on every further day of absence, again before 9.30am and inform us when they are expected to return.
• Ensure that your child returns to school as soon as possible and you provide any medical evidence, if requested, to support the absence.

The Study bugs app is free to download from the link on our school website, or from the App Store or Google Play. You can also access Study Bugs directly from our website on the homepage.

Timings –

8:40am – Doors open

8:55am-9:00am – Registration

12:00pm-1:00pm – lunchtime

1:00pm – Registration

3:20pm – Home time

The Study bugs app is free to download from the link on our school website, or from the App Store or Google Play. You can also access Study Bugs directly from our website on the homepage. 

Please follow the link below for help in deciding if your child is too ill to attend school.

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/is-my-child-too-ill-for-school/

Punctuality - 

The school day starts at 8.55-9:00am for all year groups. Pupils who arrive after this time will be recorded as late to school (L code). The registers close at 9.30am and after this, lateness is recorded as an unauthorised absence (U code). The afternoon begins at 1:00pm and pupils who arrive after this will be recorded as late to school (L code). If a child arrives after 1.30pm lateness is recorded as an unauthorised absence (U code).  Where there are concerns about punctuality, we will follow our protocol for monitoring punctuality.

Roles -

At St Nicholas, we believe that school attendance matters to everyone and that it is a shared responsibility by governors, all school staff, parents & children. In the DFE Statutory Guidance ‘Working together to improve attendance,' it states "Improving attendance is everyone's business. The barriers to accessing education are wide and complex, both within and beyond the school gates, and are often specific to individual pupils and families.”   Specific attendance roles at our school are shown below –