Regular attendance is seen as very important at Selly Park. Every opportunity is taken by the school to encourage all pupils to come to school regularly. We have a designated pastoral team who work closely with our families and support them with attendance concerns.

Recording Absence

If your child is absent from school, please report the absence by using the Arbor app to send a message. 

Medical and Dental Appointments

Parents are advised to avoid booking medical and dental appointments during school hours so that your daughter’s learning is not disrupted. Secondly in terms of medical appointments and evidence we would like all parents to share key information such as medical letters, appointment information by sending the information to medical@sellyparkgirls.org in advance of any appointments.

Latest Attendance News

Selly Park Girls’ School attendance last year, was significantly above national figures. The school has worked closely with parents to ensure the highest levels of attendance and the whole school target is above 97%.

The school follows the Local Authority procedures for attendance and please see below the relevant information that all parents and carers must read:

Attendance letter from Birmingham City Council

For any further information regarding the LA procedures, please use the link below for assistance:

BIRMINGHAM ATTENDANCE PROCEDURES 

Role of Parents and Carers in Promoting Good Attendance

The school is keen to work in partnership with pupils, parents and external agencies where necessary to ensure educational entitlement and regular attendance. The taking of holidays during the school terms is strongly discouraged, it is hoped that parents will help in the following ways:

1. Not letting their daughter take time off school for minor ailments
2. Arranging appointments and outings after school hours, or as late as possible in the afternoon, at weekends or during school holidays
3. Not taking holidays during term time. The importance of regular attendance is emphasised in the table below:

Fining parents for persistent non-attendance

As a maintained school we follow all local education authority guidelines which can include fining parents and court action when necessary as detailed below:

Schools can fine parents for the unauthorised absence of their child from school, where the child is of compulsory school age. If issued with a penalty notice, parents must pay £60 within 21 days or £120 within 28 days. The payment must be made directly to the local authority. The decision on whether or not to issue a penalty notice ultimately rests with the headteacher, following the local authority’s code of conduct for issuing penalty notices.

Punctuality

All students should be on the school site by 8:40am with registration starting at 8.45 am. Students arriving after this time will be marked late.

Attendance and Attainment

Selly Park Girls’ School ethos rests on four pillars. The second pillar is students being kind and aspirational. Evidence proves that there is a direct correlation between a student’s attendance and their attainment.

FFT Aspire, a respected educational body which analyses pupil results and pupil progress has analysed GCSE results against student attendance nationally for all schools in Summer 2019 and found that only 33% of students with below 90% attendance achieved a grade 4 and above in English and Maths compared to 81% of students with 98-100% attendance, thus proving that good attendance equals good grades.

In addition, FFT Aspire has produced further analysis showing the correlation between good attendance and student attainment focusing on student progress, for example, showing students with 100% attendance achieved in 2019 exams almost a whole grade above the national average see below: