School top for truants

The Magnus Church of England School in Newark has one of the highest levels of persistent absence in the county.

It is one of 13 secondaries identified by the Department for Children, Schools and Families because they had a significant number of pupils with high levels of absence.

The number of Magnus pupils who were persistently absent at the end of the school year 2006-7 was 172, up from 124 the previous year.

The figures at the February half-term in 2007 show 164 Magnus pupils missed 40 sessions or more and 84 missed at least 64 sessions.

At the February half-term in 2008 this fell to 124 who missed 40 sessions or more and 62 pupils missed 64 sessions or more.

The head of the Magnus, Mr Ian Anderson, said the last set of figures showed the school had the fastest improving rate of all the schools on the priority list.

He said the school was working very hard to tackle the problem but there was always more that could be done.

“We would like all the children in school 100% of the time, but that is not attainable. But we always aim for that.”

Mr Anderson said the school contacted the parents of absentees by email, text message or telephone.

They also followed up the reasons for pupils being away from school regularly.

He said there might be underlying reasons why they did not want to go to school and they could find the most appropriate curriculum for them.

At the Grove School, Balderton, 82 pupils were persistently absent at the end of the school year 2005-6.

The following year this went down to 57 and the school was removed from a list of priority schools.

The head, Mrs Patricia Head, said the school should never have been on the list.

She said the DCSF looked at one term in 2005 and any child who missed two weeks in total was said to be a persistent absentee.

Calculations did not take into account all authorised or unavoidable medical absences.

She said one pupil had 100% attendance until he broke his leg and had two weeks off.

She said work was sent home to him and he had a tutor at home, but he was still classified as a persistent absentee.

She said Ofsted rated the school’s attendance as satisfactory to good.

Mrs Head queried the figures with the DCSF but they were not interested in the reasons why pupils were not in school or the fact they were taken from just one term.

She was very proud of the school’s attendance figures. Last year, she said, the attendance rate was 93%, with only 1% of absences unauthorised.

Mrs Head said the school would continue to do what it always did, including taking registers at every lesson and calling parents on the first day of a pupil’s absence.

She said the school worked with an education welfare officer if a pupil, who was capable of being at school, was absent.