You are receiving this email as a parent/carer to ensure you are aware of your young person’s attendance at College - so that you can either congratulate them if they have high attendance or for you to discuss what may need improving. We need to work in partnership with parents and carers to ensure young people achieve brilliant outcomes whilst at College.

Attendance at College is vitally important. Most of our courses run over shorter weeks than schools, so every day that is missed means that your son/daughter/ward may miss important lessons, practical demonstrations and/or assessments. Those students who have poor attendance tend to not achieve the higher grades.

As well as their qualification, the College is instilling good habits for the world of work and poor attendance at work is not tolerated.

Each learner at Boston College has a personal tutor, who provides support and pastoral care. They should be your first point of contact. Your young person should know who their personal tutor is, however if there is any confusion, you can also contact their Programme Area Manager, their contact details can be found within the Parents’ Guide. 

The College also has a dedicated Learner Services Team, who support learners with issues such as transport, financial support or barriers to education. If you would like to discuss any concerns with the Learner Services Team, please call 01205 313218 and ask to speak to a Learner Support Officer.

If your young person is not present in a lesson, then they will be marked as ‘absent (A)’. The College does not authorise holidays or external appointments, so therefore these would also be marked as ‘absent’.

A young person may also be marked as ‘absent’ if they arrive more than half way through a planned lesson.

If your young person arrives more than 5 minutes after the planned lesson has started but before the half way point, they will be marked as ‘late (L)’.

If attendance does become an issue, then the young person’s course tutor will have a discussion outlining why attendance is important and what needs to improve. If there are barriers to attendance, then the young person may be referred to the Learner Services Team.

If there is no improvement in attendance, then the course tutor can use the College’s Disciplinary Procedure. Low attendance may limit the options available for progression into the following academic year, with repeated poor attendance potentially putting the young person’s College place at risk.

If a learner is absent from College for four weeks consecutively, then they will be automatically withdrawn from College.

If a learner is absent from their English and/or maths lessons for four weeks consecutively, then they may be withdrawn from their full course programme.

An absence must be reported for each day your young person is not going to be in College.

You can report an absence in one of the following ways:

• Phone 01205 365701, and use option 2
• Text BCABSENT to 88020
• Email absent@boston.ac.uk

Please leave the student’s name, learner ID number (if known), course and reason for absence.  

If you have stopped receiving attendance emails, it could be because:

• Your young person has turned 18 years old. The College can contact parents/carers regarding attendance and progress until the young person turns 18. Once the young person has turned 18, they are then classed as an adult.
• Please check whether we have your up-to-date contact details and email addresses. If you change your email, you must ensure that the College has this information.