Willow904 wrote:...snip...
One other thing for now - I don't know if this is common practice but we look at half-termly attendance profiles. There's an awful piece of language use in this - something that didn't occur to me until I was thinking about it earlier on, so apologies for that, but...
as a form tutor I'm asked to chase up all attendance issues, with a focus on students who fall below 96% (whole school target, which I think is a standard national figure) and especially on those who fall below 90%. Below 90% is 'persistently absent'. (It was 'below 85%' until a few years ago).
Pastoral leads and year leads (and I've been a year lead doing this not too long ago) will look at half-termly figures - so you get students highlighted who have been below 90% in any half term - they will stay on the radar all year, even if it was just one issue. One of my form is going to be highlighted on my report sheet all year because he was on an unauthorised holiday for the first week of the school year which put him at around 88% for the first half term, despite all but 100% attendance since then.
But also you can come out of percentages and just look at 'real' numbers. 90% is one day off a fortnight - or 19.5 days off in a 39 week school year. Divide 19.5 by 6, and you start to say that anybody off for more than 3 days in a half term is persistently absent that half term.
The awful language use comes for students who reach 19.5 days absence - they are referred to as 'Graveyard PA' - in other words even if they're in for every single day from that point on they will still end up with below 90% attendance for the year. But if the issue is earlier on and there is a clear upward trend in attendance from some point onward then it's very difficult to see how a parent is 'failing to ensure the child's regular attendance at school'.
I'm aware that it's possible that your figures might not help you, but I would ask for a year by year record of his attendance - the school must be able to provide a simple A4 print out for each year - which you can break down by half term. If his half-termly attendance is regularly around or above 90 but falls below for the year because of focussed bouts of absense, there might be an argument there which would help dissuade the LA from doing anything else. Likewise if it's often low at this time of year but gets better percentage-wise as the year goes on.