A SCHEME designed to cut unaccountable absenteeism from Torfaen schools could see pupils from primary and secondary pupils claim a £50 prize each term for meeting the attendance target.

The new attendance strategy “#Strivefor95%+” has been rolled out across the borough and aims to engage parents, pupils and schools in the campaign in improving attendance.

As part of the proposal, each student who achieves 95 per cent or over in terms of attendance will be entered into a prize draw at the end of the school year to win £50 of high street vouchers.

Two winners will be randomly drawn from key stages one to four and the presentation of the prizes will take place at the end of the summer term.

Any pupil who achieves 100 per cent attendance throughout the school year will be presented with a certificate in a school assembly.

Cllr David Yeowell, Torfaen council’s executive member for education and lifelong learning, said: “Raising educational attainment is a priority for the council and we are committed to ensuring pupils have the best chance of success in schools.

“Time in school and the classroom is vital to achieving high grades and young people achieving their goals, poor attendance have a detrimental effect on a pupil’s achievement and life chances.”

The council quantifies one per cent of unaccounted absence as equivalent to two days, so to achieve 95 per cent attendance or higher a pupil must not miss 10 days or two weeks of the school year.

“There are 175 days per year when children are not in school. We know some days are unavoidable but every day missed is a lost opportunity to learn,” added Cllr Yeowell.

“Currently primary attendance stands at 95 per cent and secondary attendance levels are at 93.6 per cent so I’d really like to thank parents for their continued support in improving these figures further.”

The strategy was first unveiled at council’s learning overview and scrutiny committee, which was held on Wednesday, September 27.

According to the report written by Tracey Pugh, the head of pupil support at Torfaen council, absenteeism across Torfaen primary schools has remained fairly static in comparison to the previous academic year of available and comparable data.

“Secondary schools overall attendance has shown to be static over the last three years, level of attendance remains at 93.7 per cent,” stated Ms Pugh’s report.

“Primary schools overall attendance has remained static over the last three years at 94.9 per cent - the figure for 2016/17 has yet to be verified.”

Since 2014, the council has had the authority to issue fixed penalty notice and fines for parents whose children have more than five days of unauthorised absence.

The notice can be issued for any absences not authorised by the school which includes holidays and the authority has the power to issues notices when concerns are raised by school or the police.

Parents are also legally responsible for ensuring that children attend schools and in cases of truancy or absence without an acceptable reason, it could result in a prosecution or fixed penalty notice.

The Strive for 95 campaign will be running alongside an additional hashtag of #notinmissout and it is hoped that local businesses and schools will carry banners in support of the strategy.