"School refusal" trend

Are any statistics or datasets which show what happens after children who refuse school do after the official school leaving age?

Do they go into further education? If home schooled, are the career patterns similar to school attenders? Do they get jobs? What happens?

This is a 16-page thread. Do you really think families have not already considered and tried blindingly obvious suggestions?

This is the best response ever.

Schools have got harder to cope with for ND children, anxious children.

The really strict behaviour rules, such as detention for not having a pen...can scare the shit out of anxious kids.

The GCSEs have got stricter. More pressure is put on kids.

Sats are awful in Y6.

I've also noticed a difference between the experienced older teachers and younger newer teachers (generally) in classroom management and engaging autistic kids. The older ones are better and have strategies. Some of the younger ones are clueless and this is the fault of their training. R/Y1 teachers shouting at kids a lot is not necessary. (Seen in person) Lose your experienced teachers you lose the guidance for new teachers to learn from.

Caamhs are shit. You can't get help for pretty serious mental health issues. The waiting lists are long etc. You can't get kids diagnosed for years and they are not getting supported in school, in which time they can be traumatised by school because schools don't have the resources/training to help and have had to be more rigid to cope with lack of resources.

Teachers are overworked and don't have the time/capacity to make it easier for children who need support.

I don't have current experience of parents and parenting so can't comment on that, but often there is more to it than feckless parenting.

And following on from my post earlier, today was a difficult day for my child. She's not made it in. This has only ever happened once before but her anxiety was too high today. As soon as we took the pressure off and said she didn't need to go she read her phonics book, did her maths homework, did TTRS and then read with me. She's now watching an animal documentary. I so want her to be in school but I feel we will have no choice but to home educate in the end. It absolutely isn't what I want but she went from being an anxious and scared child at 9.15am when I was trying to convince her to go in to a child who was happy, willing and ready to learn at 9.30 when we made the decision that she was too disregulated to go.

Your sister has no idea if that’s the reason why. Because that is private information that’s nothing to do with her.

The term that is used these days is either EBSA or our LA use EBSNA. Emotionally based school avoidance or Emotionally based school none attendance.

Do you think that will magically cure his anxiety and he’ll toddle off to school?

I presume he has no tech / tv / internet whilst he's at home.

I have not read the whole thread, so this may have been mentioned before. When I was in an adolescent unit for 'emotionally disturbed adolescents' way back in the mid- 1970s, there were a high proportion of teenagers in the units who were 'school refusers'. In fact, many of these children had a host of other problems which was obvious to anyone who spent time with them, but the label upon which they were admitted was 'school refusal'.

Indeed, although I was in there with an eating disorder, the boys who also had eating disorders were thought to have a primary problem of 'school refusal', however, that is another discussion

School refusal is a behaviour. Often it is not even a 'refusal' to attend school, but an overwhelming level of anxiety which makes it impossible for the child to go anywhere near the school, even when they want to attend. This was the case with my youngest. He wanted to attend. He did not want to miss school, but his anxiety levels were through the roof, and, unfortunately, still are through the roof over ten years later.

So, I would ask parents to stop using the term 'school refusal' to describe a serious mental health issue. I would also ask people to consider the impact that a child not attending school has on the child, on the family on siblings and so on. Surely we have moved on a bit over the past fifty years

Not sure why I am wasting time on this thread but it has absolutely nothing to do with permissive parenting*. If you sat in a primary school classroom and tried to guess which children would go on to be school refusers based on entitled, spoilt behaviour I think you’d have a very low hit rate.

*Neurodivergent children, who have genuine neurodevelopmental differences, often do need a different, lower-demand approach and it can be counterproductive attempting the same strategies you’d use with a neurotypical child.

And yeah, it used to be well known and accepted that during the first few years, parents had to win, to be the person in charge. The first time you let a child win a tantrum, argument etc everyone knew you were setting yourself up for months of tantrums. Kids are smart, they know when someone will discipline them and when they won't. These days, many households - many of them who write in to mumsnet - are at the mercy of their badly behaved children.

Powerless parenting has caused hellish situations for many parents. Sadly, it causes hellish situations for the rest of society too.

"Today I met with a family who had allowed their 10 year old to pretty much stay in their bedroom for almost a year, not been to school and didn't seem under any urgency to works towards getting the child back to school.... No mental health concerns (not referred to CAMHS or GP either). The child just "didn't want to go" and parent was ok with this."

Either they de-registered and falsely claimed they had made suitable home education arrangements or this is just not true. Absolutely no school or LA would accept this and the family would come under substantial pressure to get their child back into school.

If a child does "refuse" there is no good way of forcing them into a school, I mean are we actually going to advocate for physically dragging children in? Restraint? Because that is what it would involve for many of these children.

you have clearly never had to get an over stressed 10 year old autistic who is 5ft and nearly the same height as you into school.
when he loathes the teacher he has to be locked up with for 6 hours. When she stressed him out to the point where he cries multiple times a day, refuses to let him leave the classroom to decompress and he’s now diagnosed with school related anxiety and emotional school avoidance.
yeah it’s really hard. Even worse, his brother sees it all and occasionally tries the same tricks. Luckily he is 7. But my older son has ran off, got to the school gate and ran off. Got into the car and ran out the other side. Got to school and walked straight out the front gate. If there’s no help (and there really isn’t) then where do we stand as parents??

My mother was a school refuser in the 1960's ,- it really is not s new trend.

OP, tell me you have no clue without telling me you have no clue.
Jesus wept.

I disagree that it's because parents are too permissive. My DD only goes in at all because of not wanting to disappoint me. She is never badly behaved in school - she is so quiet as to be more or less invisible. I'm sure to people who haven't experienced it, it can look like poor parenting but if you haven't lived through it your opinion isn't really valid. Many of us on this thread have said before it happened to us we couldn't understand it either. Unfortunately, many schools also lack understanding.

We often get our school refused in but an hour or two late. Our school sees us get our other two children in for the gates opening on each of those days. They've seen me having to resign from my job to try and manage my. Child's anxiety. They've seen me cry when it's just too much.

The school system is wholly inappropriate nowadays and so many children just can't cope with it all. Many more cope but don't thrive. It needs investment and it needs to be adjusted so it is a more hospitable environment.

In the old days, kids were afraid of their parents punishing them. Now we have swung to the other end of the spectrum where people were having a shrieking meltdown on another thread because someone held a toddler by the arm to prevent him bashing an elderly dog over the head and the notion of punishment is treated as though it's incredibly cruel, instead of just cause and effect.

Someone will be along to monitor and correct my usage of language shortly, we are not allowed to discuss anything in clear terms without being accused of being out of touch, cruel, abusive etc. etc.

Society took away parental power, with the intention of stopping abuse. Stopping abuse was a worthy goal, but sadly abusive parents are still abusive, and its the rest of society that now tolerates intolerable behaviour regularly from kids. You see it on threads here and all over the internet, regularly and, of course, in every day life constantly.

Parents are genuinely scolded and harassed if they raise their voice to their children, no matter what the child is doing. Gentle parents (or as they are properly called permissive parents), not happy with their own kids being badly behaved, harass anybody who tries to be firmer and sanctimoniously lecture everyone else (there will be one along shortly to start on me I daresay).

30 years ago, permissive parents were looked down upon, now authoritative (not authoritarian but authoratitive which was the gold standard until recently) parents are berated and harassed and demands are made that they treat children - who are NOT little adults - like little adults.

As always, we have shifted way too far in the other direction.

Parents of badly behaved kids won't even allow anyone to say their kids are badly behaved, we are never allowed to simply point out bad behaviour without a three hour pop psychology lecture and a demand that we consider that the child may be SEN or neurodivergent or the parents may be (insert excuse here) and should therefore be allowed to do - well pretty much anything is what it comes down to. The reality is that no matter what is wrong with a child (and I am not allowed to say that either, but I will anyway) they should always be taught to behave within social norms and those that can't have to be excluded from certain activities.

And now, that is not happening, to a large extent.

I can remember when badly behaved kids could be removed from classrooms. Now they move they rest of the class.

And it's only when the kids become teenagers they realised they've messed up badly.

Too late by then as once a badly behaved child is a teenager, it would take a bashing to get them to comply - which of course would not be acceptable and definitely not something I want to happen, and in many cases would not be realistic anyway.

And that is why parents who have given away and been forced to give away their power don't try to force their kids to do things they cannot force them to do - because if they try to exercise control at an early age people jump on them and when it's too late it's just too late.

"Lonely castle in the mirror" is a novel that explores this issue in the Japanese context (where it is a bigger and longer-standing problem than here). Written with younger audiences in mind, but very beautiful and moving for adults.

My natural tendency is often to blame parents for a lot of problems, but on this issue I don't see any real basis for it. Other posters are right that this happens all over the world, in countries that are far more traditional than ours, with more and less technology, with better or worse education systems etc.

My experience has just been that in the past, and in less controlling cultures, students just quietly drop away, and no one notices. In the past they would have just dropped out, and gone to work on a family farm, or with a family friends business, or just stayed at home if they had nothing else to do.

Education was less strict and compulsory, and there was less pressure, less social service intervention, less knowing what was happening outside of your close circle etc. So it just happened, and we didn't know about it.

Many children, for a whole variety of reasons are not suited to 'modern' education. Never have been, and never will be, regardless of what parents do. This thread alone lists many of the potential issues that are out of a family's control that can lead to this.

Really, we just need to be providing alternatives. There should be paths through life that don't require an identical education for all.

I pay £50 a day (more now! Thanks Labour!) as I have a child with anxiety that started due to her severe medical problems when she was younger. Some days she loves school, other days she just cannot make herself go. She will kick and scream and lock herself in the toilet and threaten self harm. The local state school made it worse with all their military style rule and regulations….so we have to live on the breadline to pay for her to go to a private school. I literally had £10 to feed us with this week!

Who in their right mind would put up with this life if they simply had the choice of telling their child to ‘get to school’!

My autistic DD is very rule abiding so
would struggle into school crying, calling me over and over again with extreme anxiety. We went on like this until she became too mentally ill to be there and the school told us to keep her at home because she wasn’t learning and they couldn’t care for her. It was very traumatic for her and us. She had a few weeks at home and then struggled back. Seeing the damage it did to her was just awful. I regret encouraging her to go during that period as it has taken ages to build her confidence back up a little. We managed to move her to a very different school which helped and their SEN team have provided lots of therapy. She is also under the care of CAHMS. Tomorrow she will be doing her first GCSE, but there was a time when i couldn’t see how she would have been well enough to even be in school, let alone take her exams. I can totally sympathise with parents who are doing their best but their school can’t provide for their neurodivergent child. It is a nightmare and not everyone gets the opportunity to find a better, different provision for them like we luckily did.

It is a "thing" but my view is this:

Free education is an absolute privilege. Not every country in the world has it.

So, take it if you want and if you don't, who cares. There shouldn't be any sanctions at all if you don't want it.

No-one should be begging anyone to take this fantastic gift, unless a child has SEN and to deal with this, there should be more specialist school provision.

If an area can't provide the exact provision and is unlikely to be able to do so and the child refuses to partake whatever is on offer, then don't drag them there.

We need to get over the belief that every child must be educated. The chance is there but if they don't want to go, then let them stay at home.

My flatmate at Uni was a straight A student, got a first in her degree etc. Her sister was a year older and had refused school after turning 13. There was nothing her family, the school or social work could do to make her go. This was in the early 90s. I’ve also listened to the actress Rebecca Front (who is 60) talk about being a school refuser when she was at primary school. She ultimately went to Oxford University. I don’t have personal experience but I hear these people and know that it isn’t a new phenomenon (but may be a bigger problem now especially post covid) and isn’t simply about parents who are soft or don’t care.

I think I read that school refusal is a trend that has been observed in every country - even the more authoritarian ones like China with very different parenting techniques.