Working Mum - A ticking off

Guilty! I admit I'm one of those parents who doses their child with Calpol if they have a slight temperature then takes them to nursery or school. If one of my daughters says she is feeling ill, I'll tell her that she needs to go and I'll collect her if she continues to be unwell. Getting dressed and out of the house is an amazing healer and hasn't failed me yet.

As a parent I know that 'I have tummy ache' is code for 'I want to snuggle up and watch TV' or 'I want to spend time with you'. That's all lovely, but I'm a working mum and I can't take random days off work. As well as making my unsympathetic boss unhappy, it also means my workload builds up. If my husband takes a day off, he then doesn't get paid, so there are financial implications of a mythical sore tummy and we won't keep our children at home without good reason.

Luckily, our daughters are very healthy, though, unfortunately, DD1 (Dear Daughter 1) did succumb to a serious infection in her first term at school, was admitted to hospital and off school for five days. Later on in the term she got tonsillitis and missed two days of school.

On both occasions I notified the school office immediately, she returned as soon as the doctors said that she could and with prescribed medication that needed administering during the school day - proof too that she wasn't just enjoying herself at Peppa Pig World.

So I was totally unprepared for the school's stark Attendance Update, which arrives each term. It's a stock letter, making no reference to, or allowance for, individual circumstances. It was a shock to read that my child's attendance was less than expected and that the school is monitoring her.

I don't need to be told by a computer-generated letter that it's important that DD1 is not absent without very good reason. I would have loved her to have been at school instead of on an isolation ward, hooked up to an IV and screaming in pain. The letter made me furious.

Deeply patronising

I've since found out that I'm not the only parent to react in such a way. A friend also finds the tone of the letters deeply patronising, despite her son having 100 per cent attendance. Another friend, whose child attends another school, vented her anger on Facebook when she received a letter saying her son's attendance had dropped and he was being monitored. He'd had six days off when he got his tonsils removed. Hardly excessive.

Statistics are useful, but saying that 96 per cent attendance is the absolute minimum expected does not necessarily flag up problem families. Surely two blocks of time off for genuine illness is preferable to the child who is regularly late to school and has days off because she's sneezed?

At our school each class's attendance is reported in the school newsletter every week and pupils receive awards for 100 per cent attendance. Is it fair that children who are unwell are penalised? I understand the Government is putting pressure on schools to improve attendance levels, but surely that should be through personal interaction and working directly with families to support them rather that issuing stock threatening letters.

The class teacher didn't even know that DD1 had been admitted to hospital until she returned to school. She told me the class would have made her a card if they'd been informed by the office. To have received that would have shown that the school is supportive and cares about individuals instead of bland statistics.

A WORD OF ADVICE

Nothing beats the face-to-face approach when schools and families find themselves in a challenging situation, says Tony Draper, president of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT)

Few things are more important to a child's education than a strong partnership between their home and school. Sometimes absences, for whatever reason, can put a strain on that relationship. The key to making sure that doesn't happen is maintaining good communication.

The challenge for school leaders is to be compassionate while adhering to the Government's hard line on attendance. The consequences for schools of poor attendance can be severe.

In September 2015, the threshold for persistent absence will drop from 15 per cent to 10 per cent. While we support this, we lobbied hard for children with complex medical needs to be excluded from this measure. The Government did not share our view.

Absence threshhold

This change in the threshold illustrates two things very clearly. The first is that NAHT takes the home-school partnership very seriously and is prepared to stand up for families when it believes that the Government's policies may be wrong. The second is that the Government sets head teachers a very high bar on children's attendance, compelling schools to focus very strongly on absenteeism of every sort.

There will always be a need for schools to use some generic forms of communication, because they serve large numbers of people, and information must be sent out quickly. However, the important thing is that schools back up this information with individual contact with families, so each child's needs can always be properly met.

The National Association of Head Teachers represents more than 29,000 school leaders in early years, primary, secondary and special schools, making it the UK's largest association for school leaders.