Attendance
At Burghill Community Academy, we value highly that the importance of academic success is attributed to good attendance. We fully understand that there are times when children feel unwell and are not able to attend school. Sometimes it can be tricky deciding whether or not to keep your child off school when they're unwell. The following link can help parents and carers make these decisions.
Is my child too ill for school? - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
There are also government guidelines for schools and nurseries about managing specific infectious. These say when children should be kept off school and when they shouldn't. If your child is well enough to go to school but has an infection that could be passed on, such as a cold sore or head lice, let their teacher know.
Health protection in children and young people settings, including education - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Some examples are below:
Coughs and colds - It's fine to send your child to school with a minor cough or common cold. But if they have a fever, keep them off school until the fever goes. Encourage your child to throw away any used tissues and to wash their hands regularly.
High temperature - If your child has a high temperature, keep them off school until it goes away.
Chickenpox - If your child has chickenpox, keep them off school until all the spots have crusted over. This is usually about 5 days after the spots first appeared.
Hand, foot and mouth disease - If your child has hand, foot and mouth disease but seems well enough to go to school, there's no need to keep them off.
Often when we look at attendance, we look at percentages. However this doesn't always give us an accurate picture on what good or attendance that causes concern looks like. If you sat a test or exam and scored 80%, I have no doubt many of you would be really pleased. When it comes to attendance, anything below 95% begins to cause concern in the number of hours in lost learning.
The table above breaks down the percentages of attendance and how many days/hours are lost in just 1 academic year. Imagine if this was every academic year for a child.
The diagram below equally shows how the number of minutes late can affect the number of hours lost in learning. Simply being 5 minutes late every day of the academic year means 15 hours lost. Every minute in school is utilised, and this is from the very moment the children enter the school building.
Having taken all this into consideration...if you wish to make a request for term time absence for your child please email the school office on admin@burghill.hereford.sch.uk for a form to complete. All completed forms should also be returned to this email address.
Once the request has been considered, you will receive a letter to inform you whether the request has been authorised or not. Please include as much detail as possible as to why the term time absence is an exceptional circumstance, along with ensuring the request is submitted at least 6 weeks before the requested time.
School Timings
At Burghill Community Academy we expect children to arrive at school from 08:45 for morning registration at 08:55. Pupils arriving after 09:00 will be marked as late with arrivals after 09:10 being considered an unauthorised absence. The school day finishes at 15:10 for Apple and Beech Classes, and 15:15 for Willow and Sycamore.