To think attendance messaging has become insane?!

Then deal with those parents. Leave everyone else alone.

The pressure on schools is horrendous.

My youngest goes to a SEN school. They lost a pupil to Covid at the start of the pandemic and have a lot of vulnerable pupils. The HT is very open about asking parents not to send children in unwell as much as possible. She gets shit from the LA for that. She allows staff to stay off or finds them non-contact jobs to do if they are ill and it’s possibly contagious. She gets shit for that. She actually got grief for her policy of paying for covid tests (from her own pocket) for staff and keeping them away from pupils and other vulnerable staff members because if they’re not physically feeling unwell they should be working as normal.

I’m a teacher and I’m sick of the push on this. I hate that the decision is trying to be taken away from parents.
My DC have had chicken pox and sickness bugs. More recently my DH was attacked randomly in the street in front of me and DC one evening. I let them have a day off the next day as they didn’t sleep and were distraught by the whole experience. I know I’ll get a snarky letter about that too.
I know schools have attendance targets but I don’t feel like they are going about it the right way.

And nurseries are the total opposite, desperately trying to keep kids off to avoid it spreading (but parents ignore the guidance and send in anyway so it spreads like wildfire...)

It’s disgusting. They have no care for the actual wellbeing of children, who absolutely should not be in school if they are sick for everyone’s sake! Missing education can be easily caught up on even with severely ill children, but they just bully and threaten. I have no answers to offer but a handhold to all the brave parents actually standing up for their children and what they need. Thank you!!

Thank you.

He's 21 now. A lot of the emotional wellbeing work that we did over the 18 months I spent at home with him paid of and he's much more stable and responsible than anyone ever thought he'd be.

I literally stopped my life for almost two year but my God it was worth it!

Formal education, and all the professionals involved at that point failed him miserably.

I think a lot of the problem is that there are some parents (note, I said some! Not all) who keep their children off for other reasons that aren't acceptable, or whose children have multiple days off ill when actually they would be well enough to be in school.

My son is 10, Y5, has had a cold this week. However, he is has not been ill with it. Eating me out of house and home as usual, playing happily, sleeping fine - aided by a bit of decongestant. So, he has been in school. Some parents literally keep their kids off at a slight sniffle.

Then you get the ones who keep kids off because it's their birthday/routine optician appointments- yes, as a teacher I have actually had a kid off all day for this reason!, to go shopping etc. Some kids attendance is poor and it does impact learning.

I know some kids get ill more than others but since starting school in reception, my son had 2 days in infants as he got food poisoning and was vomiting. He had one day off last year as he had a bad fever with a cold. Other than that, he is in.

As schools, we are judged, by Ofsted, on attendance and we are expected to show that we are doing everything we can to ensure children attend as often as possible.

Most memorable moment....
My DS (then aged about 13) was an anxiety ridden ball of school refusal. He'd already been diagnosed with C-PTSD, School Avoidance Disorder, OCD and a severe attachment disorder (related to C-PTSD). The attachment disorder was the hardest because he only felt safe if he could physically see me, or, at worst knew exactly where I was. Educational support workers, social workers, welfare officers, attendance officers Head and HOY ALL KNEW THIS!

I was a completely single parent trying to work a 40 hour week for not a lot of money.

The solution that the ESW came up with was that I should sit outside his classrooms all day every day. When I explained that I could not do this and keep my job she told him that Mum wasn't very supportive of him and that what would happen next would be that I would go to prison and he would be taken into care.
To a child with an attachment disorder! His reaction was to force himself into school and self harm to deal with the terror.

I lost my shit and withdrew him from school, gave up my job (got made redundant luckily) and home educated. Which is what the school wanted as he brought their stats down.

Bumped into the Educational Social Worker a few years, she asked how he was and when I answered that he had been diagnosed with ASD and how astonished I was that as a trained professional she had missed it - her response was to ask if his diagnosis had been confirmed by a brain scan! For autism.

At that point I just walked away before I punched her tbh.

Same in Scotland. And you can have holiday in term time too with the HT’s permission. Except if you’re a staff member.

@Myotheripodisayoto she has an infection, so yes the pain in her ear has eased but she has a temperature of 38.5, headache, shivery and all the other shit that comes with it. She's on antibiotics.

The fluid in her ear is also making her throw up as she feels dizzy. We've been referred as it's quite severe.

I'm not someone to keep her off for no reason, and have been known to tell school to deal with it when they've called me at work in the past to collect her "with bellyache". This time, she is too poorly to go and that's it 🤷🏼‍♀️.

It’s so batty I have absolutely no quarms in completely ignoring/rejecting it. Appreciate I’m in the privileged position of having two neuro-typical able-bodied kids though. Saying that, I am absolutely furious on a systemic level about how ableist and discriminatory it is as a policy, not to mention such a toxic value system that prioritises presenteeism over actual well-being.

It drives me bloody bonkers, our school send out a weekly attendance newsletter, classes who have good attendance get a smiley face, classes with poor attendance a sad face! We only get a monthly normal newsletter telling us what they've been up to though! I'd far sooner see what they've been up to than be told that Budgie Class only had 88% attendance last week :(

I'm fully prepared for an earful next week at parents evening, DD has had 7 days off this school year so far, 3 separate sickness bugs (because other parents won't keep their kids off 48 hours).... last parents evening it was the first think the teacher spoke about... shoved a massive full colour personalised attendance print out at us (what a waste of ink and paper!) she had 100% attendance then though!

I am awaiting the emails about attendance now we have dropped down to 92%

3 days off for covid in October and 6 days 2 weeks ago for a severe throat and ear infection which caused a temp of 39.4 for 5 of those days! Covid we treated at home but the most recent illness was 2 trips to the GP so the proof is there.

I will bin any emails that come. I am not bothered. She is never late for school, we attend all events, and have never taken a term time holiday so they can nag all they want I don't care!

The people they need to be nagging don't give a shit so no amount of emails, letters, visits, radio ads etc.... are going to work on them, they are just alienating the good parents who do care about education but have ill/disabled children.

we had an email from dd's school last friday about how attendance is crucial. children should only be off school if they are infected with the bubonic plague (im paraphrasing 😝) and that 'coughs, colds etc' are not reason to be off school. Fast forward to yesterday when i get a call from school asking me to collect her because 'she really ought to not be in school with that cough' 😖

Definitely agree, and this is why I don't think we can assume this sort of thing is doing anything to help actually vulnerable children. These resources aren't infinite, and time spent whining to the parents of disabled DC about them needing medical appointments in school hours is time not spent doing anything useful instead.

Sorry to hear that. It’s extremely stressful to have an ill child and have that level of harassment. I hope your daughter is ok, and you too.

I think they only eased off when covid hit because my son was in his last year and was off to college after. It just shows it was never about welfare, it was solely about attendance. As soon as he didn’t have to be there due to covid lockdown and he was finishing at the school in a few months anyway, they couldn’t give a fuck!

I know schools have to safeguard children, but they need to use common sense. I think of all the time that they wasted harassing us which could have been spent doing good for vulnerable kids and parents and it makes me angry.

Very similar experience here (except the covid ease off!) DD has very rare chronic illness and took many years to get a diagnosis. I’ve had to deal with a massive pile on by her school, the EWO and the LA - I was accused of all sorts!

So I agree with a PP who suggested that anyone who gets a standard computer generated letter should bin it and carry on with your day/life.

That's appalling. Though I'm not sure if I could've kept a straight face at being preached at by someone claiming to think it was fine to let someone you've never met before in your sleeping child's room?! Not exactly in a position to give out parenting advice, that one. I mean what next, tips on patient care from Harold Shipman?

Haha, I get my DS3 to school late frequently, and no reminding will make a difference.

His school is a short walk away, but DS2's taxi to his own specialist ASD school is meant to turn up at X time (which would result in DS3 being in on the dot), but it usually turns up late - but not so late that I could reliably be back home from dropping DS3 to school on time if I took him in first!

I can't be in two places at once, unfortunately!