FIND A COLLEGE
- 20 May 2010
Clarification of requirement for student attendance policy
On 8 March 2010, the following addendum to the Accreditation Handbook UK 2009-10 was published on the BAC website:
To replace the first bullet of section 5.2.3 Academic Management (Areas Assessed) with the following:
» Student attendance and punctuality (minimum of 80% attendance is expected)
BAC regrets that this addendum has been subject to some misinterpretation and would like to provide further clarification regarding this longstanding requirement for accredited colleges. Accordingly, a further amendment has been made to the Accreditation Handbook, retracting the previous addendum and instead including the following expanded bullet six in the ‘minimum requirements’ of section 5.2 (Management and Staffing):
» Attendance and punctuality are recorded and monitored, with a clear policy of requiring students to attend at least 80% of scheduled classes, systems in place to monitor student attendance and evidence of prompt and effective action taken where attendance falls below this level
Please note that in the 2008-09 Accreditation Handbook, and for several years previously, it was a minimum requirement that visa students be required by the institution to attend at least 80% of classes. The omission of this requirement in the published version of the 2009-10 Accreditation Handbook was purely an administrative oversight. While UKBA does not include this requirement in its current Tier 4 Sponsor Guidance, BAC considers it to be good pedagogical practice to ensure high levels of student attendance, with there being a close and positive relationship between attendance and achievement.
