In order to achieve their full potential at school, children must attend regularly and arrive at school on time. There is a clear link between good attendance and achievement in class.
It is the responsibility of parents/carers to ensure that their child has good attendance and is punctual. Parents play a pivotal role in supporting children to arrive on time every day, so children are calm, focused and ready to learn.

Reception and Key Stage One Classes

School starts at 8.45am. The gates will be open from 8.40am for children to filter in.
Registers are taken at 8:50 as learning to begins. 
All classes have an hour for lunch. Lunches usually run from 11:30 am in the Early Years and 12 noon in Key Stage One.
School finishes at 3.15pm for all full time children.
This equates to 32.5 hours of school time.

Children will be dismissed at 3.15pm at the end of the school day.
Parents/carers are invited to come onto site and wait outside your child's classroom.
Children will be dismissed to you. If you have more than one child, please collect your youngest child first before coming around to the eldest child's classroom. 

Nursery Times

Morning 8:45 – 11:45

Afternoon 12:20 - 3:20

30 hours  8:45 – 3:30 

Illness

If a child is ill or has a valid medical reason for not being able to attend school, school must be contacted before 9am on each day of the absence so we can keep a record and assess whether we can authorise the absence.

There are three ways you can do this:

• Send us a message to the Office on class dojo. 
• Email attendance@chaucer-inf.derbyshire.sch.uk 
• Call 0115 9325629

If we have not had any contact to explain the absence, we make a safe and well phone call to the family. If we are unable to speak to anyone, we may do a safe and well home visit. If we are still unable to make contact, we will consider informing other agencies such as the police, social care or a health visitor.

Leave of absence requests during term

Leave of absence requests are very rarely authorised and the following information must be considered:

• An absence request must be completed and received by school at least 10 school days before the first requested day of absence. 
• If there are extremely exceptional circumstances, evidence should be provided to help the authorising process. 
• Penalty notices are issued for unauthorised absence, poor attendance or reoccurring lateness.  
• Penalty notices will be issued even if attendance has previously been good. 
• For holidays or poor attendance the fine could be £120 per child, per parent or carer.
• Leave of absence requests for family holidays will not be authorised.
• Requests for holidays for family weddings or to see relatives are not deemed to be exceptional circumstances.

Should you still decide to take your child out of school for a holiday, we still require you to complete an Leave of Absence Request Form, which is available from the school office. 
 

Attendance and Punctuality

Please see below for our Attendance Policy.
It is important to us that we work with families to ensure all children have good attendance at school and achieve their full potential. 

We will use the following procedure to keep you as informed as possible about attendance and punctuality concerns.

Step 1

If your child’s attendance drops to between 94-91%, we will contact each parent making you aware of this and send you a parental responsibility letter.

Step 2

If your child’s attendance drops further to 90%, a meeting will be arranged with both parents. During this

meeting, a parent/pupil target agreement will be completed, and a penalty warning notice will be issued to both parents. The penalty warning notice will give a set number of days for attendance to improve within.

Step 3

If your child’s attendance does not improve during the monitoring days, a penalty of up to £120 per parent, per child will be issued from the local authority.

If attendance does improve, you return to step 1.