Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Missed work due to absence

How does your child's school handle missed classwork and homework due to illness-related absences?

When kids are absent for an illness, they have the same number of days to make up missed work. If your child missed three days, they have three days (from the time they received the make up assignments) to complete the work they missed.

(That's the official policy. So far none of the teachers have been too strict about it but our kids are in elementary school, so it's not too difficult to catch up. I'm not sure what would happen in high school when you have more complex assignments.)

This is the first year we have been asked to make up missed classroom work (as in, DD has to do all the work they did in the math book during class, as well as the homework). DD has also been asked to stay in at recess to make up missed classroom work. I was wondering if this was typical.

When I was in Jr High, I missed a month of school due to meningitis. I had a month to make the work up, officially. A few teachers waved some portion of the work, and a few did not. It was at their discretion. There was one teacher (Health) in particular who did not follow the rules. While I was out (and believe me, I was out!) she flunked me, even though I had had an A up to the point of my absence. It was one of those 1/2 year courses and I guess I missed the last month or something like that. My mother was LIVID. I mean, she was worrying about me in a life and death sort of way, and this teacher -- who told my mother she did not believe I was that sick -- wanted me to retake Health instead of make up the work. A trip to the principal fixed that... But I still remember the commotion to this day (and that was a looooong time ago). Our current school, many moons later, follows the same general outline, but generally, they don't really expect the work to be made up until 6th grade or so.

We use a charter thru a homeschool umbrella so they do attendance by work, not days attended (for the money) so they do have to have us make up, but it's easy, we just do extra fun homework stuff not the actual work. Just more practice/play so they can stay funded. It's K-8.

Virtual school here-- no missed work. We know from the first day of school both:

a) the precise nature and extent of each course syllabus, including ALL work associated with that course of study, and

b) the precise deadline by which that work MUST be completed.


Anything not completed becomes a zero. The reason is irrelevent. Yes, this is a little harsh, but hey-- we know what it is going into it.