Attendance
If your child cannot attend on a particular day, please telephone the main school by 8:30am on (01386) 840216 and select option 1 (absences), followed by option 1 (Year 7 – 11) or option 2 (Year 12 – 13) and follow the clear instructions. Please contact us on each day that your child is absent, unless this is a longer-term issue known to the school and supported by medical documentation, as appropriate.
Please do not use the office@campden.school to report a student absence. The only exception to this is if you need to inform us of details of a forthcoming medical appointment, and in this case, it is fine to email office@campden.school, attaching confirmation of the appointment.
Leave of Absence
Permission to be away from School is granted only in special cases e.g. dental or medical appointments if these cannot be made at any other time. However, for these absences a copy of the appointment card or letter should be provided when making the request for absence. We would expect a student to be absent for the appointment only and not for the full day.
Occasionally we make concessions for important family commitments, or for outings connected with a future career, but we find that we cannot do our best for students unless they realise that School is important and are encouraged by their parents to think so. If you think that you can reasonably ask permission for your child to be away, please complete a Leave of Absence form and email it to office@campden.school at least five days in advance of the requested absence, to allow the Principal the opportunity to consider of your request.
The Attendance & Welfare Officer
Sharon Tyler is our Attendance & Welfare Officer (AWO) who works in School. As part of her work, Mrs Tyler deals with welfare, frequent and prolonged unexplained absences and the monitoring of attendance at individual lessons. Mrs Tyler will follow up on concerns over attendance involving contact with students, parents/carers and, where necessary, will carry out home visits. Mrs Tyler liaises with key staff and outside support agencies. She can always be reached by telephoning the School.
With thirteen weeks of holidays, there should be no reason to take a family holiday during term time. Penalty notices can be issued to parents who take their children out of school. More importantly, the disruption to students’ learning of a week (or more) absence may have a severe detrimental effect on their progress.