This is well beyond general school stupidity. This is downright callous.

[SomeRandom]

'However, it is not practical to start making exceptions. We suspect it would result in appeals from other parents all putting a case why the school should excuse their children's absences.

Did anyone actually read the article? The boy wasn't banned from school, he missed a treat the school was using to address an issue that they had.
The school had an issue with attendance. A policy was put in place to try to fix it. It is unfortunate that the boy will miss a movie, but sometimes the rules need to be applied equally.
This looks like one of those times.
Tom
'There will be similar treats for pupils with good attendance at the end of the spring and summer terms, and I sincerely hope that Ozzie will be able to attend those events.'

Yeah, did you?
It clearly says in black and white that this freaking 5 year old child was hit by a freaking car!!

If my workplace tried to reprimand me for my non attendance due to being run over, I'd take the ****ers to court. Or at least the Union. Because that is beyond stupid. And you're saying a school should be able to punish a child for being hit by a car?

And his attendance dropped to something like 96%. Hardly someone they were targeting anyway.
This is not what I call implementing a policy, equally or fairly. That's called being a heartless person without any compassion, common sense or basic decency .This school should be ashamed of themselves.
What's next? They won't extend this so called "treat" to those who missed two weeks because a parent died or something?

 

[Draka]

Did you read the article?
The school had an absenteeism problem. So, as a way to help with that, they offered a treat at the end of a term for the kids who were at or above 96% attendance. That is all that this is about. Nearly everyone thinks that is unfair.
I think the kid is learning to use victimhood as a tool, myself.
Tom

Yes. I did read the article. Did you?

The school had an absentee problem. Fine. But there is a difference between truant and laid up in a hospital. I've never even held a job that couldn't tell that difference. Never, never have I heard of anyone being punished or reprimanded, in any way, for being hospitalized due to injury or illness. That is beyond a person's control and is not something to consider part of an absentee problem. Frankly, to even consider it to be so is absurd.

 

[dust1n]

It does, the distinction is between "authorised" and "unauthorised" absence, the school makes a judgement. That is what is puzzling in this case. It might make sense if the child had a history of truancy but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

I mean, under any pretense, I'm not sure why you'd a rule to applies to people who experience medical emergencies and people who aren't experiencing medical emergencies alike..

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I think the kid is learning to use victimhood as a tool, myself.

How is a child who was hit by a car learning to "use victimhood." He was a legit victim who went through a legit trauma. It's a given there were zero chances he was being truant. Jobs have things like FMLA to cover necessary leaves, so why shouldn't this kid be excused?

 

[Quoth The Raven]

'However, it is not practical to start making exceptions. We suspect it would result in appeals from other parents all putting a case why the school should excuse their children's absences.

Did anyone actually read the article? The boy wasn't banned from school, he missed a treat the school was using to address an issue that they had.
The school had an issue with attendance. A policy was put in place to try to fix it. It is unfortunate that the boy will miss a movie, but sometimes the rules need to be applied equally.
This looks like one of those times.
Tom
'There will be similar treats for pupils with good attendance at the end of the spring and summer terms, and I sincerely hope that Ozzie will be able to attend those events.'

While I don't imagine the intent of the policy was to punish children with otherwise perfect attendance for being hospitalized, this is effectively the end result. If the policy allows for a distinction between 'authorised' and 'unauthorised' absence, then it's likely that the intent is - as with any well written policy - to be able to apply it equally to different circumstances and be able to arrive at a different end result. It's the desire to have a cut and dried answer that you don't have to think about that's the issue here.

The rules are not being applied 'equally', they're being applied lazily. 'If we actually apply the policy workflow to this situation, he'd be able to go to the movie. We're worried that other people may then expect us to also apply the policy workflow to their situations, and really it's so much less work for us to just say no than it is to take five minutes to run through the page at the back of the policy with the boxes and the arrows that shows us what to do.'

I've done a lot of policy review and mapping, I'd be reasonably certain the one for this policy isn't:


Has the student had 96% attendance or greater? Yes ------> They can watch the movie No -------> Shun the unbeliever!