Hi all,
I posted earlier in the year regarding our concerns that my step-son had been missing school while in his mother's care. We have a 50/50 care arrangement and have already gone through the court process to gain this arrangement.
Unfortunately, the school attendance in the mother's care is getting worse and we are not getting much support from the school. They have advised this is a family problem.
The first half of the years attendance is too tricky to work out as the child was kept home from school by his mother weeks before and weeks after the recommended Covid school shut downs.
The second half of the school year currently looks like this:
Week 2 - 2 days off
Week 4 - 1 day off
Weed 6 - 4 days off
Week 8 - 1 day off
Week 10 - 2 days off
Week 2 - 1 day off
Week 4 - 1 day off
Week 8 (current week) - so far 3 days off
These are the days we have received SMS messages for, there are other days where the mother has informed the school that the child would not be attending and we have therefore not received a SMS message for these days. We will be requesting an attendance report for the child to get the full picture of his attendance.
There is a clear pattern to us that the mother is purposefully keeping the child home. The child tells us his mother has told him to pretend he has been sick and also says statements such as 'mum will miss me if I go to school 'mum isn't allowed to go to the sports day so i needed to stay home or she wouldn't miss me'.
I guess our questions is, do we have any legal paths we can take to try and encourage higher attendance of school in the mother's care? My understanding is that you can only go back to court if something happens that renders the current orders not possible - a parent moves away for example.
Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!
I posted earlier in the year regarding our concerns that my step-son had been missing school while in his mother's care. We have a 50/50 care arrangement and have already gone through the court process to gain this arrangement.
Unfortunately, the school attendance in the mother's care is getting worse and we are not getting much support from the school. They have advised this is a family problem.
The first half of the years attendance is too tricky to work out as the child was kept home from school by his mother weeks before and weeks after the recommended Covid school shut downs.
The second half of the school year currently looks like this:
Week 2 - 2 days off
Week 4 - 1 day off
Weed 6 - 4 days off
Week 8 - 1 day off
Week 10 - 2 days off
Week 2 - 1 day off
Week 4 - 1 day off
Week 8 (current week) - so far 3 days off
These are the days we have received SMS messages for, there are other days where the mother has informed the school that the child would not be attending and we have therefore not received a SMS message for these days. We will be requesting an attendance report for the child to get the full picture of his attendance.
There is a clear pattern to us that the mother is purposefully keeping the child home. The child tells us his mother has told him to pretend he has been sick and also says statements such as 'mum will miss me if I go to school 'mum isn't allowed to go to the sports day so i needed to stay home or she wouldn't miss me'.
I guess our questions is, do we have any legal paths we can take to try and encourage higher attendance of school in the mother's care? My understanding is that you can only go back to court if something happens that renders the current orders not possible - a parent moves away for example.
Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!