To not understand the fixation on attendance?

DS has "poor attendance"
It was 100% until he was ill in January which then flared up his asthma to the extent that we had to 999 at school shortly after arriving. After a week struggling where everytime the front door was opened, we had a strategy where I could drive into the school site and use his reliever to settle him before he was ready to go to the classroom.

As soon as that calmed down he ended up having emergency surgery for something totally different. He went back to school with in a week, but wasn't on great form so his attendance was still ropey in the following month. Half of that has been marked unauthorised despite the fact it was all connected to surgery, infection needing anti-biotics and side effects from the anti-botics.

Then he vomited and he was unauthorised for having the audacity to follow the school's 48 hour policy. Am I now supposed to let him vomit in class and share the joy? I'm certainly not attempting to phone the GP x100 to get through and evidence such unnecessary trivia.

"Unauthorised attendance" has ceased to have any useful meaning to me.

Especially after the toll of the Covid years when he was prohibited from setting foot in a classroom for 6 months (4 +2), plus the 10 days isolation because a classmate had a cold. It's taken him years to catch up from that, and school has been unhelpful at identifying and supporting his learning difficulty.

Sending obnoxious letters doesn't magically make children fit and well to learn productively. I'd love for DS not to have gone through all that pain and distress!

Meanwhile his classmate doesn't have an appropriate school place for September.

Schools generally have a pretty good idea over whose attendance is about health, or safeguarding. The system of pissing parents of ill/ struggling children off as a tick box activity is not going to improve anything and just damages the relationship with school.

The system sucks and is unproductive.

I understand what you're saying but I disagree that by just showing up those kids got an education.

Obviously, there are benefits to them showing up eg safeguarding concerns can be spotted and raised, less likely to be engaging in antisocial behaviour (in school hoirs) because they're bored, socialising with their peers. This doesn't equal getting an education though.

So.... was it actually any better from an education perspective than them just not showing up?

Not saying that those kids should just be left behind, I'm asking if perhaps the needs of these kids need could be met better in other ways and if the focus on attendance is clouding that issue.

All the 50,000 members of not fine in school are not swanning round on holidays. Most of them can only dream of a holiday as there kids are too unwell with school trauma to travel or they had to give up and income due to their child's illness and can't afford it.

Feckless parents and holidays are just the tiny top of the iceberg. They real reason is under the water and isn't being addressed by the press or the govt.

I suppose it depends what we mean by that subset and the good old days. It didn't used to be particularly uncommon for people to fail all their exams having not got a lot out of school, then go straight into work afterwards rather than doing any FE. It was common enough in the working class community where I grew up, and I know people who are still pretty young who that applied to. Was happening well into the noughties. They only really got an education in the widest sense of the term, ie they were mostly physically present whilst some education was being delivered.

Is the "just suck it up for a few more years" model actually any better? Presenteeism isn't highly praised in any other arena. @WasThatACorner

No, of course not. That was just a sub point of my broader comment that the "parents just don't care" argument is a whole lot more nuanced than people who use it like to think. In this case, specifically that there are a subset of parents who don't care because they dont' see the value and a) we need to solve for THAT problem and b) at least in the old days, the children still GOT an education even if their parents didn't see the value. Which again, means we have a bigger societal issue.

Changing holiday prices isn't realistic, unfortunately. Much of the pricing isn't even under the control of the UK government, since so many people travel abroad. People like to holiday, they're restricted in when they can go and so the market charges more.

Is the "just suck it up for a few more years" model actually any better? Presenteeism isn't highly praised in any other arena.

I know this was definitely the approach when I was in high school and there were plenty of kids who came in because they had to be there, didn't engage with lessons, were disruptive and constantly in trouble and left with poor grades.

Most that I still hear about went straight into full time work from school and did well for themselves.

To me this suggests that their needs weren't being met by a quite rigid education system. That system has only got more rigid in the years since.

I expect there is reason for the uniform in your job and not just because the manager decided everyone had to wear it just because.
Is your uniform provided or do you have to purchase it out of your own pocket? And does your employer specify where the item has to be purchased from even if the item is available cheeper else where

The reality is that there are jobs available that impose very different requirements on the holders than school attendance does on DC. Sure, there are some people who won't be able to cope with work at all as adults, and those people are probably over-represented amongst those who can't cope at school either.

But the world of work isn't just a continuation of school. There's enough difference between the two that you cannot simply assume someone who doesn't cope well in a school environment won't be able to do so in a job, especially with the rise in remote work.

Oh yeah and I am wearing my work uniform right now so yeah, grown ups wear them too 🤷‍♀️

Yes, I think it's more complicated. The "parents don't care" argument is a bit binary. It's a lot more nuanced. Those parents may well "not care" because they don't see the value - perhaps school never helped them (or that's what they think). Perhaps they feel like the contract has been broken (as has been mentioned on here a number of times) so there's an attitude of "well, why should I bother when the school/government/local authority doesn't give a flying fig about me?". Perhaps they "don't care" because the're prioritising other things like mental or physical health.

And I agree, if it's really that they just don't care, I think that's a sign of a much bigger problem in terms of not demonstrating how important education is. I suspect there was always a small group of this sort, but in the past, the language would have been, "well DS, you have to go to school but just suck it up for a few more years and it will be over" vs today which is "Nah, what are they going to do? Put you in jail? Don't bother". So the underlying problem is the same, but the response of the parents is different.

One of the major issues is the distorted holiday prices.

I think it needs legislation that holiday companies cannot charge such extortionate prices in the holidays. It makes it impossible for families to take them in school breaks (and it's a mare for teachers too who have no choice either!).

Then you need to take a holistic look at each child and case. Kid with high attendance allowance year wants a week off early July for summer holiday, no problem off you go. Kid with health issues, no fines and just support them. Parent who lets kid have every Friday off cos they don't like PE (genuine conversation I had with a parent once) deserves the fines and hauling into a parenting class for their sheer laziness and lack of 🌰🌰.

Also the jobs that have uniform is linked to a purpose. MacDonald for example.

1. Uniform just for work

1. Identity - easy for colleagues and customers to identify who works there
2. Cost. Work uniform is provided free.of charge where as school.uniform is usually very expensive and paid for by the family

In the real world it’s pretty damn difficult to get any support even for those with serious and well documented needs. Look at the people who can’t get DLA despite being in a wheelchair or housebound or stage 4 cancer.

If it’s too costly or not practically do-able to make adjustments then all a workplace has to do is say they tried but it’s not possible.

Plenty of jobs have very strict uniform, often due to health & safety, and they absolutely will make you leave if you refuse to wear it.
Many jobs make you clock in and out to know exactly the hours you are there.
The school uniform has 2 main purposes - one to attempt to make all pupils feel equal and like they belong. Two - to easily identify pupils (and kids who aren’t pupils) both inside the school and outside.
Most schools have a fairly reasonable uniform policy of ‘school colours’ for sweatshirt and black trousers, maybe a badge. Only know of one school in the city I work in where they penalise pupils about things like shoe colour - and that’s the ‘best’ school with a very long list for places.

We no longer send children to work as soon as they can walk, though. We don't expect a child to regulate their emotions in the same way that an adult would at work.

The idea that children should have the exact same expectations as adults is ridiculous.

I'm sure my youngest will be absolutely fine as an adult, but the environment and stressors in school are a massive issue for him. His education would be damaged by his not being allowed some adjustments. A lot of people will function in the 'real world' just fine without adaptions because they choose to pursue a career that is fitted to them as an individual.

When you apply for jobs do you apply for workplaces that scare you. Maybe working at a spider shop when your biggest fear is spiders?

I suspect not. You apply for jobs linked to things you can do. Maybe it takes a while to find a workplace that you can cope with.
With school you have no choice which school you attend. With work we have a certain level of choice
You also get paid for the job you do and if you don't cope with work there is a benefit system so you don't starve. So those who can't find any environment they can cope with won't work.
Most people do find suitable work but being destroyed by school actually makes that harder

That's the real world

Except... It absolutely does?! Loads of workplaces have a uniform! And no, if you arrive at work not wanting to go in they wont gently offer you a choice of locations to work in today, and try and persuade you to start work 🙄

To those people saying that parents don't care about their child's education.....

Do you think that parents who take a more holistic approach to raising children may care about education but not to the exclusion of all other facets of the child's experience and needs? Does it have to be so binary?

If you are right and so many parents simply don't care, do you think that this is indicative of the education system failing a large proportion of children? I doubt academically high achievers are the children with 20% attendance. So, what do these children need that they are not getting from school?

Ah the 'in the real world' argument

In the real world you can't be discriminated for not being able to walk upstairs. You can use the lift (in school you need a special pass and they decide if you deserve it) if you need to or choose to.
In the real world.ypu can have access to work which funds the specialist equipment or support you need.

In work as long as your clothes are not a safety risk and aren't inappropriate you decide what you wear. In school uniform has no practical need, no safely need but you can be in trouble for grey socks rather than black ones

Rules for rules sake is something the real world doesn't have.

Agree with this. Some parents at the moment are raising their kids to think they can just 'ask for reasonable adjustments!' for a load of stuff. In reality, employers won't always agree to adjustments - legally they can consider cost, disruption, practicality, effectiveness etc. I honestly think we are doing young people a disservice if we aren't realistic about what they can expect out in the working world.

I think that sometimes parents forget (and children haven’t yet learned) that once you have a job it doesn’t matter if it’s sometimes boring, or if you have to wear a uniform, or if your boss is a bit of an arse - they will sack you if you’re off too often without very good reason.
Attendance isn’t just for attendance sake. It’s safeguarding. It’s important for academic achievement. It’s a very important thing to learn for your future because your employer might well not care less about your mental health, your sniffly cold or your difficulty getting up in the mornings.
You need to go to work, the days and hours you’re supposed to be there. Bar serious illness or very good reason. They will get rid pretty quick if you’re not.

Ok...calm down? Its not that deep!

This is astonishing small minded thinking. As @Drfosters points out - school holidays often correspond to popular times to travel globally. But our school holidays are not the same as other school holidays. Believe it or not, that resort in france's peak time encompasses far more than just your 6 weeks of school holiday.

I find this so ridiculous. The holiday industry must adjust its entire model based on a perfectly valid, and in existence since the first two cavemen made a deal over who would get which part of the mammoth after a hunt, of supply and demand? Putting aside the fact that attendance is not an overall issue because of the odd holiday, how on earth are you going to get the global travel indusrry on side? So ridiculous.

Rather, get our economy a lot more sorted and encourage growth so that the rest of us can actually enjoy a holiday without having to take our kids out of school. As I pointed out to someone on the weekend - by any metric, I am demonstrably less well off financially today than I was 10 years ago because even with some increase in earnings, everything else has gone up. As a result, I cannot afford annual holidays anymore. If my wage increase could be in line with the actual increase in my costs, then this would not be an issue.

That shows the system works well. The lower prices incentivised people to go in off peak times. Peak times often correspond to school holidays but school holidays often are at times which are popular for everyone such as Xmas or summer.