Dear Parents and Carers
I want to talk to you about helping the school to improve attendance at Yale Primary School. I recently attended a meeting with the Regional Office Director, Ken Peris and was informed that there is currently a focus in the Department of Education on bringing our attendance rates back to pre-covid levels.
Traditionally Yale Primary School has always had a good overall attendance rate at around 91% but, after the fire and Covid related sickness in Term 1 and Term 2 our attendance rate has understandably taken a bit of a battering and dropped by about 11% for semester one.
If children are well we would like to see them at school regularly. Every day at school matters and everyday at school leads to learning and improvement.
At Yale Primary School we do a number of things to try to improve attendance such as the following;
We strive to understand every unexplained absence and our school officers and our chaplain make telephone calls to check in with families to ascertain why students are away.
We have an attendance award and the winning class gets to select a reward if the classes’ attendance is the highest for the fortnight.
We conduct home visits, if appropriate to check with families and encourage students to come to school.
We hold case conference meetings with parents to discuss issues related to poor attendance
Through our newsletters we promote better attendance
At the moment our attendance rate is climbing slowly and is about half way there but, it could be better. So if students are well please send them to school.
Glen Read Principal