As the weather continues to be a bit dreary it can be challenging for some students to get up and running in time to be at school before 9:00am.

I'm writing this article on the third day of this term. Already in the three days we've been back, 32 students have been late on 43 occasions.

Being late is a fact of life for all of us. The pressures of busy family life, work, and factors that we can't influence like traffic flow, can make it difficult for all of us to be on time consistently.

While being 10 minutes late to school on a couple of days each week may not seem a huge problem in the overall scheme of things, in a child's life the impact of this lateness can be significant.

Being 10 minutes late each day equates to nearly one and a half weeks of school missed each year. When extended over 13 years of schooling, that's nearly half a year in total - a lot of lost opportunities to learn. Additionally, children who are regularly late to arrive lose the opportunity to connect socially with their friends and classmates before school.

Where lateness is a consistent issue for a student, we follow up with individual families on a 1:1 basis, however already this week we've also noticed an increase in sporadic lateness across the whole school and want to nip this in the bud before it becomes a pattern.

We would very much appreciate your support in having students at school between 8:30am and 8:55am each day. If there are any barriers to your child being able to be at school on time each day, our class teachers and SENCO, Jane Brown, would be very happy to work with you to remove them.

Susan Jennison