Good school attendance gives your child the opportunity of success and helps develop skills for life. Your child should attend school every day unless there is an unavoidable cause of illness. Missing school damages a child’s learning and disrupts their routines.

Types of Absence

• Authorised absence means that the school has either given approval in advance for a pupil of compulsory school age to be away, or has accepted an explanation offered as justification for absence.
• Unauthorised absence is where a school is not satisfied with the reasons given for the absence or you have not contacted school to provide a reason for the absence.

If we have not had any contact from you and we are unable to contact you or we are unhappy with the reason for absence you have provided we may ring the police to carry out a safe and well check on your child.

Whether your child’s absence is authorised or unauthorised it still counts towards their overall attendance.

Request for absence in Term Time

Requests for leave of absence will not be granted for the purposes of a holiday. The law does not give any entitlement to parents to take their child on holiday during term time.

Please be aware that an 'Application of Leave of Absence for Exceptional Circumstances' must be completed 4 weeks in advance of the requested absence. All requests not made within 4 weeks of the requested absence will be automatically unauthorised. You can get an application form from the office and if you are planning to take your child out of school during term time you must fill this out.

You will then be informed in writing by the attendance panel within 28 days of the request on their decision. If you choose to take your child out of school during term time and it is not deemed as exceptional circumstances and has not been approved by the school, then this will be coded as an unauthorised absence and a Fixed Penalty Notice will be issued for the period of absence if your child is of statutory school age. Please see below an example of our FPN Warning Letter. 

Our Academy is an Independent Academy and will therefore not be communicating with any other Academies on our decision. Therefore, if another sibling’s holiday has been authorised by another Academy it doesn’t automatically mean that the holiday will be authorised by our Academy.

Request for absence for religious purposes

As an Academy, we will authorise any requests from parents to take their children out of school on some religious grounds. However, parents must provide sufficient evidence as proof.

Weddings, Christenings and Funerals are not classed as religious ceremonies and a request for absence will need to be made to the front office if you intend to take your child out of school for one of these reasons.

Lateness procedures 

Our Little Sparkles and Little Gems AM session start and finish times - 8.45am to 11.45am.

Our Little Sparkles and Little Gems PM session start and finish times - 12.15pm to 3.15pm.

Please ensure nursery children are collected on time as you may be fined the hourly rate for late collection if this is a re-occurring issue.

Our Academy day for Reception - Year 2 starts at 8:50am and the school doors open at 8:40am. Children in Reception to Year 2 need to arrive no later than 8:50am.

If they arrive past this time, but before 9.20am, they will be marked as L (Late) on the register. If they arrive after 9.20am they will be marked as U (unauthorised late) which affects their attendance. It is vital that children are in school on time as otherwise, they will miss their Phonics session. 

We have regular attendance meetings where we discuss children's attendance and if they are showing as being persistently late we will send you a letter or email regarding this and that it needs to be improved. 

We have an attendance email that you can contact if you have any questions attendance@hillcrest.lincs.sch.uk or you can call the office on 01427 613483.