Policies on attendance vary across Abu Dhabi schools

At Al Worood, the school that Nizaha Aalaa attended, teachers only call parents if their child is absent for two days or more.

ABU DHABI // Schools in Abu Dhabi have varying policies on when to follow up with parents if a child is absent.

Nizaha Aalaa, 3, who died after being locked inside her school bus, had been marked absent in her class at Al Worood Academy Private School.

The school’s policy is to follow up with parents if the child is absent for a second day, said Dr Muna Al Ansari, one of the school’s owners and its president.

“The first day we do not call,” she said. “The second day, in the afternoon, we start to call.”

The school had expected absences this week because of Eid Al Adha last weekend, and more than half of the school’s pupils did not attend on Tuesday, the day after the four-day public holiday. That meant more than 1,000 children were absent, school officials said.

Saji Oommen, principal of Upper Wisdom Private School, in Abu Dhabi, said the school called parents if their children were absent for two consecutive days and they were required to provide a medical certificate if the child was sick.

Gregg Vossler, a former principal at Manor Hall International Private School in Al Ain, who is still involved with the school, said that last year his school had strict policies on attendance.

Teachers leave the attendance records outside their classrooms early in the day and the school secretary calls families whose children are absent, Mr Vossler said.

“We want to know immediately,” he said. “It’s not just finding missing kids, it’s also verifying that kids are actually absent for a reason and parents know about it.”

Some schools have electronic registration, where a parent receives a text message if their child is not registered in the morning, said Judith Finnemore, an Al Ain-based managing consultant in education and school improvement.

Schools should follow up on the first day of absence, she said.

UAE schools normally have high attendance rates, Ms Finnemore said, and a lot of them do not have electronic registration, as is typical in the UK, because of the cost.

“[Schools] haven’t got the manpower to make a thousand phone calls,” she said.