To not understand the fixation on attendance?

It’s the “computer says no” attitude that winds me up. Surely schools are aware of which families can’t be bothered, and the genuine cases.

My DD was hospitalised with Covid, and developed heart problems and Long Covid in sixth form. She was bed bound for weeks at a time. What we experienced from the school was nothing other than outright harassment. Despite me ringing every morning to report her absence (which is ridiculous in itself when she had a sick note, I still had to call every morning), I’d still get constant text messages and emails threatening us with social services. The stress of her illness plus the ongoing threats from school almost pushed me to a breakdown. Whenever I spoke to the school about it they’d just say “Yeah, just ignore the emails and texts. It’s just procedure for OFSTED”.

They were clueless about the stress it was causing and the implications that I was a disinterested parent who wasn’t making efforts to get my child to school.

Surely they can back off from the genuinely ill children and focus on the rest. No amount of threatening us would have made my daughter fit to attend school.

It's true. Some schools do a lot to help, and go above and beyond. I think if families can't get the support needed from the wider system it must be tough though.

I feel like it is similar to work places. Manager who has lost control and lacks management skills starts micromanaging employees.

"What support?
Being called into meetings to improve attendance over and over again. Where the underlying issues are being pushed aside and ignored by the school."

We do try to help if parents share the reason.

We have provided transport, offered late start times, sourced an old washing machine, spoken to employers to change shifts and all sorts of other things to successfully improve attendance.

EBSA is a hard one to solve. The child identifies a source of anxiety but, once removed, another one takes its place. Eventually you've removed everything you can as a mainstream school, and added every reasonable adjustment. Some parents do have unreasonable expectations (not all).

I thinknthey mean more for families who don't have medical issues, more the school refusers

I think its really important. If kids aren't there they can't learn. Plus it's a safeguarding worry. We all knew kids who missed out because their parents struggled to get them in due to their own issues - the kid should have been in school, the parents needed help.

I'm really pleased my mum sent me to school with minor ailments or if I felt worried etc.. I found just getting on with things helped and I'm pretty resilient because of it.

Of course there will be circumstances where kids need time off due to illness including mental health. But if a kid is unhappy at school just taking time off sitting home watching tv won't solve it. It will be harder when they then fall behind or miss out on friendship stuff. In such cases a longer term solution is needed than just being relaxed about attendance.

What irritates me is the sheer hypocrisy in all this. On the one hand we are told that one day out of school does irreparable harm, on the other hand we have children out of school due to an increased incidence of severe anxiety and mental health difficulties who are just left in limbo for months on end, despite legal duties on local authorities to provide alternative education. Frankly I would rather that government energies and finance were shifted to look at that second group rather than on obsessing about 100% attendance for all the others.

This. Loads of UK parents don't back up the school in terms of discipline (little Johnny couldn't possibly have done that/he was provoked!), homework (CBA reading/doing spellings/times tables with their child for 10 minutes a day) or getting them to school regularly.

It's all fine and well for MN parents to say they want more flexibility, but the reality is that it's usually not their DC who would suffer from that policy. It's those whose parents do a mediocre job to start with, and who need all the help they can get.

We had the same. My dh died 3 years ago and it greatly affected us all as a family, I lost my dh and my kids lost their beloved stepdad, I took a few months of work but my dds were expected to attend school with very little support. As a result my dd2 attendance dropped as her mental health dived. Then my mum died, my dgs was born with kidney issues and then something else awful happened to our family. My dds are both really struggling. The school don’t give a fuck.

im done with it all

I think your approach is fairly common now, and you are the type of parent the schools and government are trying to reach with their various measures and campaigns.

Of course we don't want genuinely ill children in school, but the attitude of 'school and qualifications are not important' is so sad, depressing and limiting that there is an obligation to address it.

So to everyone outraged that their ill child got a letter - this here is the problem.

It might be unusually but neither of my children have ever had a day off sick in their entire school lives and are now teenagers. Neither caught Covid either. That is just pure luck, genetics and I think a particularly germy nursery! But I don’t think children should be punished for being sick. I get sick a lot and have forced myself into work when really I should not have and it isn’t fun.

That definitely needs interrogating further. How many of the non-attenders have mental health difficulties and/or SEN? How many of the ones with SEN are not having their needs fully met? Guess what, there's a direct correlation between poor MH/unmet SEN and lack of attendance, also a direct correlation between poor MH/unmet SEN and low grades.

What support?
Being called into meetings to improve attendance over and over again. Where the underlying issues are being pushed aside and ignored by the school.
Being sent on parenting courses which just add more stress and don't improve attendance at all because it isn't relevant when your child has health reasons for being absent.
In the last term alone we have averaged 1 hospital appointment a week. These take the whole day because location of hospital.
Not a damn thing we can do about medical appointments.

I also think it would be such a crowd pleaser to allow 5 days authorised holidays at the discretion of the headteacher

The problem there, OP, is that less responsible parents would take 5 days to mean 10, at least before they'd expect anything to be done about it, and that's before you get to the issue of Headteachers being bombarded with folk "explaining" why their case is exceptional

Of course genuinely sick kids shouldn't be in school, but I rather doubt it's these who are the focus, and the issue of irresponsible parents isn't an easy one to fix

"And what about SEN kids who are being failed by the school? Do you give a shit about them?"

I don't know any SEN kids who are being failed by the system. They are well supported at my school and every school I've worked at, and that's all I can talk about really.

Schools have been told they have to offer suppprt to low attendees but families who book skiing or safaris in Africa hardly need suppprt!

Attendance is a safeguarding issue. If students aren’t in school, what are they doing? This isn’t necessarily “our” children who are ill, or engaging in wholesome family activities. It’s those who are spending days on line, hanging around doing drugs, selling drugs, dragged into sex work, exploited otherwise. If these students are in school, they are safe between say 8-4, they are getting positive messages, choices. They are fed, warm, safe. Schools can’t distinguish between “those” students who are at risk if not in school and “our” children whose parents are looking after them.

This doesn’t apply to everyone. When my dc were in burnout they were learning absolutely nothing.
We withdrew two and home educate them . They are now doing amazingly well and will go on to pass GCSE’s / a levels as their older siblings have.

Younger dc in school have what is classed as persistent absence yet are also doing well academically as they are not mentally and physically exhausted. If they aren’t right I’d much rather they skip PE day for example rest well and get back in the next day than push through, get exhausted and then be burnt out and off for 2/3 days ! It’s just common sense if you have a child with any kind of medical issue or SEN they need to have more considered than a % as an indication of their chance of success in life.

What buttered toast said.

The issue is there are clear stats that better attendance = better results and the post covid drop in attendance has a huge impact on attainment.

Huge numbers of people are taking term time holidays and its absolutely not all people for whom cost is an issue.

It's because we're slowly discovering that a huge chunk of British kids are feral, horrible and thick as shit.

And the parents are rough, just as awful and will argue till blue in the face that there is a list of reasons that their darling is failing and not one of them is theirs or the kids fault.

It really isn't that black and white.
My child had a serious health issue which meant they couldn't attend school for large periods of time. The LA should have provided a home tutor during these times but they did not.
Child also has additional needs which have never been adequately supported.
Both those reasons have resulted in child being so far behind that this has caused mental health issues and child has developed school based anxiety.
School still didn't support with anything close to what child needs.
Meanwhile the stress of being unable to work, the stress of being blamed for not getting child to school, plus the battle to try and get support. Left me thinking everyone would be better off if I was dead.
When I forced child into school, child became suicidal.

The issue is that schools can not meet needs and the pupils (and the whole family) are being failed while been gas lighted to believe we are to blame).

And what about SEN kids who are being failed by the school? Do you give a shit about them?

This is the reason. And it's a good reason. More and more parents don't care about their children attending school regularly.

I'm a teacher and don't care about attendance. If there's a few missing, my job is easier. The person who suffers in the long run is the child, not me. If they don't achieve what they should at the end of the year. I'm off the hook if they had poor attendance.

But there is a correlation between attendance and achievement so there's a moral obligation to at least try to get them in, so the school does what it can. Parents don't like it of course. They are outraged that their judgment might be called into question.

The social contract has changed due to lockdown, as other posters have pointed out. Not to turn this into a should we shouldn't we have discussion, but it's done now. Turns out attitudes to school attendance is yet another thing that we can't just switch back on when convenient.

And I think we can see it at all levels. Mine are always over 95% despite SEN, which is as much a matter of luck as anything else. They don't get ill much, don't school refuse as yet and so I can save the sick days to go on holiday a couple of days either side of the school holidays. And the odd mental health day. One is even getting an attendance award this year even though we've been away twice!

But even as someone whose DC would be unlikely to be picked up on by attendance focus (disclaimer- not heard the speech) I'm still just not buying into it. I'll be the one to decide whether it's appropriate for my DC to go in, I'm better qualified to make the assessment than anyone else and I'm completely uninterested in the views of a state that fucked my kids education off for months at a time whilst others were allowed proper education with better ratios.