Attendance

Education Act

Under the Education Act, attendance at school is compulsory until a child's sixteenth birthday. Regular attendance is required, and only sickness or other unavoidable causes should be allowed to interfere with school attendance or preparation of work. In addition, parents are asked not to extend holidays by having pupils leave earlier or return later than the official College times.

Pupils can be deleted from the roll after 15 consecutive days absent and WINZ notified.

Safe at School Programme

During 2006, we introduced a new computer programme called 'Safe at School'.  This system identifies students who have been marked absent during the morning roll-check and sends an automated message to parents either by phone call, email or text message to let them know that their child was not present at school.

We have had a much reduced absence rate since implementing this programme, however there are many things parents can do to help the programme run smoothly and to avoid unnecessary messages:

	Please ensure that your child arrives to school on time.
	If your child is away for the day, or is going to be late, please contact the school to let us know - we can then mark them as 'excused' on the roll.
	Students who do arrive to school late should sign in at the student centre.
	Please make sure that the address and phone details held by the school are correct. If you change your phone number or move to a new address, please let us know so we can update our details.

Year 13 Students

For Year 13 students, the privilege of wearing mufti will be linked to their attendance at school.  Students whose attendance falls below 80% (without a valid reason) will be required to dress in correct uniform until their attendance improves.