Attendance worries for my son with cp.

myjakeys

Hello, i have a six year old with spastic diplegia cp. He can walk thank god and he will be getting his splints on the 4th feb. My son goes to a special school and has quite a lot of appointment seeing various professionals. Most of theses appoinments have to be in school time but i do try to see if i can get them from 4 pm onwards after school although this is almost impossible. Also as well my son does get ill from time to time ie . colds, viral infections etc Today i had a knock on my front door and got the shock of my life when the man standing there told me he was a attendance officer and he was here about my sons attendance. He asked me various questions about why my son has had time off school . I explained that my son did get sick from time to time and that if i felt he was too ill to go to school then me as his mum would keep him off . He was very nice about it and just explained that i needed to keep an eye on his attendance. I immediately rang my sons school and explained who had been out and i was told that even when my son has appoinments at the hospital/clinic this was classed as an unauthorised absense. I cannot get my head around this as my son is A.disabled.B. has various appoinments. C only six years old but his learning is at 4 and a half. I just need some advice really. Is there anyone who has had this problem before and also shall i complain to the education. Even though the attendance officer was really nice, it really shook me up and i am now worried sick about my son having any future appointments/ illness. Can anyone advise at all. Sorry this post is so long.

redicane

Can I ask do you notify the school about your sons appointments. I worked in a school in the UK for a number of years(Not as a teacher or an Education Welfare Officer) and attendance was one of the issues that would have impacted on my job. In most schools now the attendance is monitored electronically and the LEA has access to it. If you are not giving a reason for your sons absences then the school will mark it as an unauthorised absence, however, I would have thought if you brought in the appointment letter or card for the school to photocopy, then this should allow the absence to be marked as medical and therefore authorised. That is the way it worked in the school that I worked in. In the LEA area I worked in, any student who was under 85% were visited by the EWO. To put this into context however, if a child were to be taken out of school for a two week holiday within the first term, then the attendance will drop to 75%.

I hope this makes some sense and I hope you get it sorted.