Attendance Strategy & Parent/Carer Survey
Dear Parents/Carers
As you may be aware since the return from the COVID-19 pandemic, student attendance to school has seen a decline nationally. At Bristol Brunel Academy we know that students with greater attendance have a greater chance at success within the Academy including improved understanding in lessons, improved relationships with staff and students and increased engagement. Attendance is a key tool in promoting the Brunel Way to make sure students leave with academic, personal, professional, and social skills to be successful within the community.
This is why we are introducing the “Attendance is key to unlock success at BBA” program to improve attendance across the Academy. BBA is committed to achieving an average student attendance of 96%, as this offers the best chances of success for our students.
School attendance is vitally important for students to achieve their full potential and days missed, even from year 7, can have a significant impact.
Chances of 5+ GCSE 5-9 grades including English
The graph in above link shows national research, on the importance of attendance on GCSE outcomes. Whilst an attendance of 90% may not seem that low, this research showed that it can reduce your child’s chances of achieving 5+ GCSEs at grade 5-9 including English and Maths from around 82% to 57%.
To help support attendance we are looking at the following groups: Attendance Group
As part of the “Attendance is key to unlock success at BBA” program you will receive a letter detailing your child’s attendance and the group they fall into. Nationally attendance is measured in sessions, where a school day is made up of 2 sessions; an AM session 8:40-12:20 and a PM session 12:20-15:00. If students have not attended in the morning, but can attend in the afternoon, this will improve their attendance compared to missing the entire day. Also, to receive the AM mark students need to be no more than 30 minutes late, although we would recommend making sure that students arrive at the Academy for 8:20am.
To support the “Attendance is key to unlock success at BBA” programme we would like to seek some anonymous absence information from Parents/Carers and Students to help us identify the reasons students are absent from the Academy. This will purely be to help BBA identify general areas where families need support with attendance.
Please click the link to the survey below to provide feedback:
Student Absence Survey – Parents & Carers
The information generated from the absence survey will help to form the basis of the general support we will be offering over the coming weeks, this will be in the form of information leaflets, parent information evenings/videos and coffee mornings and will include support with knowing “how ill is too ill for school.”
We will be holding a coffee morning on Friday 17th March, 11am-12pm to support families of students with anxiety. If you would like to attend the anxiety coffee morning, please email: [email protected]
If you have any specific concerns around your child’s attendance do not hesitate to contact your child’s year team on:
Thank you for your support.
BBA attendance team
