Attendance Logic a No-Show

Over the past week the majority of Year 12's and 13's have been placed on Attendance and Punctuality Report by the school, due to the fact that many students have been supposedly achieving under 95% attendance.

Whilst this may be the case for some of the students on report, the sheer amount of people the school have put on report raises a few questions, first and foremost being: why so many? As many teachers and students have pointed out alike, attendance is based on the a.m and p.m registers. This means students in Years 12 & 13 have a narrower margin for attendance (1 mark off in 4 equating to 25% of an attendance percentage, as opposed to, say, 1 in 20 accounting for 5%). Unhelpfully, the school uses a system wherein unmarked registers also count against your score; if your teacher is off or doesn't take the register, you take the fall for it. This poor mathematics on the school's behalf lead one teacher to call the whole thing "nonsense".

The second question that arises is, what's the point? If the numbers are inaccurate, and are blatantly so, why bother with the report at all? If you have the entirety of a class on report, it's a waste of time for teacher and student, especially if those students are on time and have simply been caught in the net, such as, ironically, the Head Girl and Head Boy, and the Head of Prefects. Don't bother, and reserve the report for those who actually need it. Equally, if the majority of students are on report because they are not meeting standards, but are attending lessons, perhaps the bar is set slightly too high? I know we should aspire to greatness, but the last time members of a school thrust their greatness on students, they were put on a register.

Finally, as a school that supposedly champions the environment through REACT and the many millions of bins on the grounds, it is one hell of a waste of paper.