At Downs Junior School we regard attendance and punctuality as being of great importance.

We have developed two timetables: one for Lower Juniors (LJ) and one for Upper Juniors (UJ).

LJ (Y3 & Y4) starting at 8.50am and finishing at 3.05pm. Gates will open in the morning at 8.40am for the first week in September but then will change to 8.45am from week 2. For pick-ups, gates will open at 3.00pm.

Upper Juniors starting at 9.00am and finishing at 3.15pm. Pupils can enter our site at 8.55. For pick-ups, parents can enter onto our site at the same time as the Lower Juniors at 3.00pm.

All three gates can be used by any year group. Parents are not expected to enter the school’s playgrounds at drop-off time but they can at pick-up time.

We feel this well help us with delivering our curriculum and provide the break-times that best matches each year group’s profile. We also believe that it will alleviate some of the pressures and controlled chaos that were felt (in an out of the school) when we used to have over 500 pupils and parents accessing and exiting at the same time.

Any pupils arriving after these times will be marked as late and will have to sign in through the office.

Regular and punctual attendance at school is vital for ensuring that pupils reach their full potential and make good progress.  It is also very important for pupils’ social and emotional development, it helps pupils to develop a sense of belonging to the school community and helps them to develop and sustain friendships.

We view pupil attendance as extremely important and take our responsibilities towards promoting excellent attendance seriously.

We have a zero tolerance attitude towards holidays and days out during term time, unless they comply with very limited exceptional or unavoidable circumstances.

We work with an Independant Attendance Advisor to ensure attendance and punctuality is kept in line with our Attendance Policy.

Parents and carers have a legal duty to ensure that their children of school age attend school during term times unless there are genuine reasons to prevent this, such as illness.

We work with our parents to ensure that all our pupils attend regularly and punctually.