If your child is absent from school (partial or full-day) you can use the school app, email or phone the school and state the reason for your child’s absence. Alternatively, a note can be given to the teacher when the child returns to school. It is a legal requirement that all absences are accounted for.

Applications for longer term absences (25 or more days) need to be made to the Principal and attendance requirements specified by the ACT Government need to be followed.

Rationale

St Clare of Assisi Primary School recognises that there are occasions when it will not be appropriate to require a child to meet the full-time requirements of the Education Act (2004). Under the provisions of the Act, a child is required to be enrolled and attend school or apply to be registered for home education no later than 14 school term days after the day the child turns six years old, or begins to live in the ACT.

For children enrolled at a school, the ACT Education Act 2004 (the Act) stipulates under section 10A that it is the parents’ responsibility to ensure that the child:

• attends school on every day, and during the times on every day, when the school is open for attendance, and
• attends every activity of the school (including attendance at an approved educational course) that the school requires the child to attend.

This is referred to as the school attendance requirement.

Parents are responsible for notifying the school of their child’s absence.

Parents do not have to meet the school attendance requirement on a particular day if they have a reasonable excuse for the child not attending school on that day.

Examples of a ‘reasonable excuse’ for a child’s absence may include:

• illness, including recovery from major illness, injury or medical condition
• medical or dental treatment
• bereavement
• sanctioned extended absence in relation to children of travelling families
• attendance at court or other legal hearings or meetings associated with hearings
• participation in sanctioned debates, sports, musical or theatrical productions not directly arranged by the school, or
• participation in interstate, national, or international academic or sporting event or equivalent.