Merton Bank Primary School

Attendance

Every moment matters at Merton Bank Primary School.

Attendance is key to academic success and social development. 

Please aim for your child to be in school EVERY day! 

We expect all our children to achieve at least a 96% attendance percentage each year.  However, we know that there can sometimes be exceptional reasons why children cannot attend school, such as illness.

At Merton Bank Primary School, we support our families to achieve this target of 96%.  We know that sometimes, absence is unavoidable however this should be minimal.  As a school we will support families however we will not tolerate poor attendance.  We aim to act at the earliest point to ensure that when attendance dips, we listen, support, understand and set targets, to get children back into school.

When children are absent from school they miss out on their education, they miss time to build and develop friendships, they miss fun, memorable, life changing experiences.

As Merton Bank Primary School we strive for an excellent education for all.  To support this, we encourage the highest possible levels of attendance and punctuality. By seeing our children every day and providing them with an educationally safe and secure environment, we can support their learning, and enable them to achieve their potential. Through good attendance, we believe that we can promote the development of the whole child. We work with our families to encourage children to attend school every day, and on time, so that they can flourish and achieve highly. 

Being in school is important to every child’s achievement, wellbeing, and wider personal development. We believe that attendance is everybody's responsibility.  Staff, parents, carers, pupils and all members of each school’s community have an important contribution in improving attendance and punctuality, ensuring pupils attend so they can achieve the very best they can.  We thank you for your ongoing support to secure the highest levels of attendance at Merton Bank Primary School. 

We run a Breakfast Club every morning for all children in Reception to Year 6.  Our Breakfast Club can support good attendance at school.

To find out more please go to our 'Breakfast Club' page.

Attendance Ladders

Our attendance ladders below show the percentages of attendance and what that means in terms of number of missed days of learning.  Our target is for all children to be above 96%.

Support for Parents

Unsure whether you can send your child into school?  Please click on the link below for advice from NHS.

 Is my child too ill for school - NHS advice

School anxiety and refusal: How Parents can help their child get through tough times.

School anxiety and refusal is really difficult to deal with.  It comes with a mixture of emotions for child and parents/carers.  

Click here for some really excellent advice on school refusal

Advice for school refusal

Attendance at Merton Bank Primary School is everybody's responsibility.

Mrs Angelina Malone is our Attendance Officer.  Mrs Malone leads attendance at Merton Bank, however we all play our part.

To strengthen our work with attendance even further, we have recruited a leadership team of 'Attendance Ambassadors'.

Our wonderful team take their responsibility seriously.  Together, they are on a mission, to get every child into school every day.