Attendance and Absence

Student Absence

All absences should be reported to the Attendance Officer, in the Academy Office, by 9.30am on each day of an absence, unless a long-term absence has been reported. The academy will contact you either by text message or telephone call if we have not received notification by this time. This contact is to ensure that the student is safe and has not set out from home and failed to arrive at the academy.

When your son/daughter returns, you are also asked to record a note of explanation on SeeSaw.

To report an absence, please use one of the following options:

Authorised Absence

  • Medical/dental appointment with evidence
  • Vomiting / Diarrhoea
  • Temp. over 37.8
  • Religious Observation
  • Interview / Visiting a possible new school/college
  • Immediate Family Funerals

Unauthorised Absence

  • Family member has an appointment
  • Pet Bereavement
  • Holidays in term time
  • Arriving after 9:10am
  • No reason given for absence
  • Parent / Carer unwell
Authorised and Unauthorised absences.jpeg: Information slide with a dark blue background titled "School Absence". Below the title, text reads: "Parents and Carers should be calling or emailing in every day their child is absent." A second heading states: "Authorised and Unauthorised Absence. What is the difference?" A large green tick appears above a box labelled "Authorised", listing: "Medical/dental appointment with evidence", "Vomiting / Diarrhoea", "Temp. over 37.8", "Religious Observation", "Interview / visiting a possible new school/college", and "Immediate Family Funerals". A large red cross appears above a box labelled "Unauthorised", listing: "Family member has an appointment", "Pet Bereavement", "Holidays in term time", "Arriving after 9:10am", "No reason given for absence", and "Parent / Carer unwell".

Holiday Leave

The Department for Education (DfE) are very clear in their expectations of schools and academies that parents or carers should not arrange family holidays during term time. They do, however, recognise that in exceptional circumstances it may be necessary for such holiday leave to be granted. Should you have such a need then your request should be in writing to the Assistant Principal for Behaviour and Culture.

The Assistant Principal will discuss all such requests with the Principal who can give special authorisation in exceptional circumstances. You will be notified in writing of the outcome of any such decision.

Please refer to our Attendance Policy, which can be found on our Policies page via this link: https://www.bradfieldsacademy.co.uk/about/policies/

Other means of contact

Each student has an Academy Student Planner which can be used to convey messages to or through their tutor. Sometimes this is the easiest way to make contact with the academy.

Parents/Carers can also communicate with teachers via Teams or SeeSaw.  However, it is preferable that correspondence is made through the Student Planners as much as possible.

On occasions, detail has been sent into the academy via the driver or escort on the transport. This is, indeed, seen as part of their role but please remember that often they do not know the correct member of staff to pass details to and therefore this can be an unreliable method of communication.