Attendance at Littleover Community School

Every Day Matters.

At Littleover Community School, we want every student to learn, care and succeed. Excellent attendance is an important part of achieving this.

Our ambition is for every student to achieve 97% attendance or above, wherever possible.

Being in school is about much more than attending lessons. Regular attendance gives students access to high-quality teaching, friendships, trusted adults, pastoral support, enrichment opportunities and the routines and relationships that help young people thrive.

We recognise that some students face genuine barriers to attending school regularly. Our approach combines high expectations with high levels of support, working closely with students and families to understand and overcome these barriers.

Why does attendance matter?

Every day of absence means lost learning and missed opportunities.

Across one school year:

At 90% attendance, a student is classed as persistently absent and has missed almost four weeks of education in just one year.

Regular attendance supports academic achievement, positive relationships, wellbeing and a student's wider development.

Our approach

Our attendance strategy is based on five simple principles:

EXPECT – We have high expectations for attendance and punctuality for every student.

PROMOTE – We work to make LCS a safe, positive and inclusive school where students feel that they belong and want to attend.

NOTICE – We monitor attendance carefully and act early when attendance begins to decline or patterns of absence emerge.

SUPPORT – We work with students and families to understand barriers to attendance and put appropriate support in place.

CHALLENGE – Where absence continues, we will work persistently with families and, where necessary, other agencies to improve attendance.

Supporting students and families

We understand that the reasons for absence can sometimes be complex.

Our pastoral, attendance, SEND and safeguarding teams work together to identify barriers and provide appropriate support. This may include meetings with students and families, attendance mentoring, pastoral or wellbeing support, reasonable adjustments, individual attendance plans and involvement from external agencies where appropriate.

Our starting point is always:

What is preventing this student from attending regularly, and what can we do together to improve things?

At the same time, we remain ambitious for every student and will challenge avoidable or unauthorised absence.

Recognising good and improving attendance

We celebrate students who attend regularly, but we also recognise improvement, resilience and overcoming barriers.

This ensures our approach is positive and inclusive and does not disadvantage students whose absence may be linked to significant medical needs or circumstances outside their control.

Attendance and The LCS Way

Excellent attendance is part of The LCS Way.

We Learn – being in school gives us the best opportunity to learn.

We Care – we notice when someone is struggling and offer support.

We Succeed – regular attendance gives every student the greatest opportunity to achieve.

We Work Hard – we develop resilience when things are challenging.

We are Always Prepared – we arrive at school and lessons on time and ready to learn.

Working together

Improving attendance works best when school, students and families work together.

We ask families to make regular attendance a priority, contact us promptly when their child is absent and speak to us as early as possible if there are difficulties getting their child into school.

We would much rather know about a problem early so that we can help.

Every day matters. Every student matters.

Our aim is simple: to ensure that every student is in school as regularly as possible, benefiting from everything LCS has to offer and having the best possible opportunity to learn, care and succeed.