Attendance

I am often asked why attendance at school matters so much - why are we strict about holidays, why do we question absences, why do we ring up or text to find out where students are, why do we intervene and meet with parents/carers of students whose attendance is low....?

The reason is easy to say - if students are not in school then we cannot teach them!  It is rare for me to be struck so forcefully as I was by the chart at the top of this post.  I appreciate that it is a bit technical, but to explain: Progress 8 is the way in which the overall progress of a student can be measured while they are at secondary school.  A Progress 8 figure of 0 means that students made average progress nationally - they did "what might be expected of them". 

What is really, really clear about this chart is that it shows, across all schools, that if attendance falls below 95% then a student will not, on average, do as well as they should do for their ability.  Put another way, the more a student is in school the better they will do.  To repeat - this is across all schools, not just WLD...

This is why we work so hard on attendance - we want all our students to do the very best that they can for their ability. If they are not present in school then they are very unlikely to achieve what they, you or their teachers would want for them...

Should you have any questions about attendance please contact Mr Howarth (Deputy Headteacher) at school.

Regards

James Harris

Headteacher