Absence, Attendance, & Punctuality

What you need to know

This page tells you everything you need to know if you or a student you care for is unable to attend college. If the absence isn’t planned (i.e. unwell, emergency doctor’s appointment), then students should report this using the Student Absence Reporting Form, click here.

What will you need to provide on your absence form:

Student Name

Student ID Number

Reason for Absence

Course Title

Campus

Attendance & Punctuality

Students are expected to attend all timetabled sessions. This is important to ensure students are successful, progress and achieve.

Lessons start promptly at the scheduled time. For example, if a class were to start at 9.00am then students should be inside class and ready to start before 9.00am.

All student absence should be reported to college by 8:30am on first day of absence through the QR code on the back of the student ID card, or the ‘absence reporting form’ above. This will then inform all relevant staff of the absence information.  The student’s primary emergency contact will receive a text message to notify of the absence report to confirm validity.

In addition, where your son/daughter has missed one or more lessons, you will receive an automated text message at 9:30am and 4:30pm to inform you of the absence. It is really important your son/daughter discusses this with their course tutor, to ensure the relevant support can be provided to support positive engagement with sessions.

If your son/daughter is expecting to be late for a planned lesson, or needs to leave college during the day and still has lessons that they should be attending, please make sure they contact their course tutor before they leave.

If a student’s absence is known about in advance (i.e. university open day, hospital appointment), then the student needs to pre-authorise this with their course tutor before the absence takes place. We ask that every effort is made to avoid disruption to learning.

We ask you not to arrange holidays in term time due to the negative impacts on learning that prolonged absence has.