Friday, May 18, 2007

Attendance




I have spent a tremendous amount of time mulling over student attendance, particularly with the grade eleven and twelve students. I need some advice. I would really like to know what types of policies are in place in other schools. What are the steps/procedures and what are the consequences? My own son is in grade eleven and his attendance is very good. Obviously one of the contributing factors of this is me.

There are many other parents who feel that their children need to begin to make their own choices in grade eleven or twelve when it comes to attendance, studying and behavior, and I do agree with this. However, many parents will phone the school and simply inform us that their child will not be coming to school in the afternoon or day, or the parent will phone the next day and say that their child had a doctor appointment, I just forgot. I believe that in many cases, this is simply a method for the parent to avoid a fight with their child, and parents may assume that natural consequences will prevail. If their child does not attend regularly, their chances of success are greatly diminished. The conflict that I am having is that the odd parent will not create an alibi for their child and therefore these children receive consequences. I realize that I can't control this, but will the "diligent" parent continue to be diligent regardless of school consequences? I feel that there are probably only about 20% of the students receiving consequences for their "absenteeism's" and these are the ones who do not really need it.

Any advice??

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