To not understand the fixation on attendance?

How true is that though, across the Board?

I took flights during term time to a popular holiday destination and the flights were completely full, as were the local bars and restaurants.

Foy family AI resorts, the above makes sense. But absolutely not elsewhere.

You misunderstand how holidays are priced. the peak holiday time is the normal price. That’s where they make their profit. The off peak time is discounted to cover costs. It isn’t that prices are put up but they are put down when things are quiet. You can’t ask holiday companies to reduce their peak time prices or they would not be in business. Having a holiday is not a human right. I didn’t go on holiday every much as child and when we did it was cheap and cheerful. I didn’t take my kids on holiday until they were about 8 years old as the cost wasn’t worth it vs their enjoyment at that age. Holidays are never a reason to take time off during school time. Illness and family issues such a bereavement are perfectly acceptable.

I agree it needs looking at individually …

The attendance is …. % send a letter is pointless .

The children with 20% attendance need more help than those with 90% .

i remember taking a month out of school to go travelling in the 70’s .. it was not an issue then

I recall many years ago a Year 11 girl was to be presented with a special award because she had never missed a day from starting school in Reception, the local Mayor was coming to present it and the press had been lined up. Sadly, she broke her arm the evening before and missed her presentation! Even she saw the funny side of it when she came to collect her GCSE certificates a couple of months later.

To me there are two easy fixes here:

Stop the holiday industry profiteering during holiday seasons
Stop the reward of 100% attendance. I dont go to work 100% of the year, why would a child? Its abelism and as soon as a kid is too ill, thats their attendance fucked for the year and theres no point trying to strive for it anymore.

Some parents ignore the letter, and some are furious to receive it, but some respond and ask for help.

That's great, but the point at which the letter is triggered needs review. Sending the letter when the child has missed a month of school and you know they've been in hospital is NOT helpful and adds to the stress. There are ways to automate this to remove the workload but still have a human cast an eye over it - eg school's system identifies children who are below. Someone casts a quick eye over the lists. Spots that Jenny is on there, but has had meningitis. Removes Jenny. List is then sent out with auto-generated letters to everyone else.

Not hard.

"This is the point. Attendance should be a marker that is used to identify issues. Instead it's become the goal. "

I agree. At our school it is used this way. Some parents ignore the letter, and some are furious to receive it, but some respond and ask for help. That's why it's worth doing, even if some parents are terribly affronted to receive it.

I already posted a little list of things we've done to help parents with attendance issues.

We have negotiated with employers on their behalf, paid for breakfast club, sourced a cheap washing machine for someone who wouldn't send her children in dirty clothes but didn't have a washing machine, joined them for medical appointments.

I am not stupid and know there must be bad schools out there who are falling short.

But I think it's only fair to then say that there are some bad parents too, who are also falling short - some want help, some think they can handle it themselves, some don't see a problem at their end and want to rage at the school.

There are a gang of boys around our way who don't seem to go to school. One, who lives round the corner from us, did go at least some of the time in primary school but as far as we can tell, he's not going to high school at all. Last week, at DS' sports day - which is held off school grounds in a local athletics track - these boys were lurking, watching the students, being a bit threatening (they have form for attacking and bullying the children, including my DS) and at one point attempted to climb the fence to get into the where the school was. they were, needless to say, chased off by teachers.

But I had to ask myself - what is happening here? These parents know their children aren't going to school. Are they just too exhausted by their children's behaviour that they can't fight any more? Or do they not care? What do the schools these children are supposed to be going to think about it? These are the children attendance goals should be targeting because they are the ones who, long term, are suffering from a lack of education.

Obsessing over the kid who is down to 94% becuase he had a few extra days with a virus is not really the problem.

Do you not have any idea how hard it is to work if your children can't attend regularly.
I don't 'allow' days off, but equally I can not work because of the time off for appointments and illness.
I can't say go to school it's wednesday you can be sick on Saturday

I understand a child that is exhausted by school is likely to be off on the days a parent is home because they likely to say go in today and see how you feel tomorrow. Child is likely to push themselves and then feel even worse the next day

This is the point. Attendance should be a marker that is used to identify issues. Instead it's become the goal.

And automated letters are ridiculous. A friend kept receiving ones when her dd was in hospital. When she contacted the school they sort of shrugged their shoulders in a "well, that's the process but don't worry, you aren't in any real trouble" sort of way - the last thing she needed while dealing with a very sick child.

The children of our working parents have excellent attendance.

Non-working parents are more likely to allow a day off, or part time working parents allow it on their days off.

I disagree that they were the worst affected.

Children starting EYFS in 2020 have really suffered - two years without the structure and socialisation they needed has been a disaster for their development.

Also teens leaving school in 2020 and 2021 - no closure or saying goodbye, grades given rather than earnt, lost university places and whole lives derailed through no fault of their own.

One thing that does surprise me as well is that the majority of parents work now - they need their dc in school so they can work - the fact that attendance levels are so bad despite this really says to me there is a problem with the school environment not parenting.

In the 80s/90s when I was at school most of us had mums that didn’t work and our dads did - you’d think that would mean it was easier for children to be off but it wasn’t the case we were all in most days - but the pace of the school day was slightly better and we spent longer on each subject now it seems to be they are trying to fit too much in and it’s overwhelming a lot of children

DD2's needs aren't particularly severe, all she needed was secondary school to be more like primary school which she loved. A middle school system would probably have been good, or a school that just wasn't massive, with no proper transition in 2020, with loads of fear generated by the government about getting Covid and passing it on to your gran, a school with a ton of extra rules and taped off teachers and desks, with no fun things she enjoyed like sports and school trips. I can't say as I blame her TBH, what we did to kids in 2020 and 2021 was appalling. DD1 started self-harming after they closed school again in 2021 as ironically she is the opposite and needed the routine of school. The cohort who started secondary school in 2020 are the worst affected. We threw them to the wolves.

"Wow you sound perfect. If you really do this. How does this get financed? Where does the money come from to enable this.

Often we as parents are asked what we want and in general we don't know the answer so we suggest things that may or may not work.

What is your answer?

In my mind it fails because the system doesn't work and the sticking plasters are a short term fix but nothing really.changes."

It doesn't cost anything to make adjustments such as flexible start times, personalised learning in some lessons, safe spaces, regular breaks, exemption from specific activities, different uniform expectations, different playtime, different entrance/exit, carefully considered seating etc and we routinely offer a wide range of interventions.

TA support is harder and you do have to be creative there.

But fundamentally, for many kids, what they find intolerable is 'being in a building with hundreds of other children' and there's just nothing we can do about that.

Or sometimes parents are very worried about what is pushing them away from school, when the child is telling us that the main issue is actually all the things pulling them home - worry about a parent, not liking to be seen by other people, wanting to stay in bed or game.

I'm not saying that's a parent's fault btw. But it is not always 'what are school going to do about this.'

We usually have months of 'what are school doing about this' before parents realise for themselves that we have actually tried everything they or their child wanted and it didn't work because it was never the true problem in the first place.

@Againlosinghope Thanks, is there any possibility of change? Any will for it? It would cost more I suppose.

It's really hard on families with close family abroad, and it's really hard on children who are genuinely (for whatever reason) often off sick. But attendance is a really important welfare flag that was catastrophically ignored in various well-known tragic local authority safeguarding fails and I support them tracking it - even if it was infuriating when we got a stern letter about attendance when they knew my kid had been off for eight days with chickenpox.

Part of the problem is that so much time, effort, and resource would be needed to genuinely dig into every absence, examine any underlying issues and work with the family and support services to improve things.

In the absence of any of this time and resource (not the schools’ choice or fault), blanket policies and automated letters are the default.

Yes inclusion policy is failing the most vulnerable and isn't working for the majority either

School routinely class mental illness and SEN issues with attending school as unauthorised absence when it actually should be authorised as illness.

They routinely ignore DofE advice and medical evidence presented by parents.

If you want more information on this, join the group Not Fine in School on Facebook. I'm sure posters on there would be pleased to fill you in.

Your council isn't going to the same as other councils. It's also a moot point.
I haven't actually been fined but I have had the stress of fines being mentioned. I have had the letters about child's attendance. I have seen the school posts about missed learning impacting outcomes. All.of which causes undue stress
I have seen people being told to prove the child.is ill. As in parents are not to believed. Parents are not to be trusted. While doctors will not do letters for children as a general rule. Often parents who do manage to gets letters have to pay for these. Additional costs when having a child with medical needs already reduces income and up costs.

It isn't right.

I had to give up a career I loved because of not being able to rely on child being able to attend school and I couldn't continue to cancel work at last minute.

I'm on support groups and my experience isn't isolated it is far too common

Part of this is one of the school’s metrics that OFSTED use is overall attendance, so governors put a lot of pressure on heads to increase it.

And heads respond with (at least semi) automated solutions such as warning letters when attendance drops below a certain level. This really annoys parents, especially when they are worried about a child due to a medical condition.

Generally, lack of attendance goes nowhere other than generating paperwork. I got one of these letters when my son had a concerning medical condition in Year 7 and needed lots of scans etc, some 90 minutes drive away. I emailed the school asking them to reverse the letter; they ignored me. I demanded an in-person meeting with the form teacher and head. Suddenly a real person got involved and I received a fulsome apology.

I don’t think you can avoid having attendance as a school target, as it does, at school level, massively impact outcomes. OTOH. as a parent, the best thing is to just ignore the automated letters, until they threaten a meaningful consequence (which rarely happens). If it does, just demand a face-to-face meeting and go in with plenty of evidence.

When our children were at school some years ago we were spared these complications so I am surprised how this thread has been taken over by concern about SEN or other conditions. We only had straight truancy with one or two children who ran off or didn't turn up.
Is it to backward of me to ask if we have reached the limits of inclusion of ALL children in a mixed class?

I feel like it's the measurement rather than the attendance which is the issue - it needs to be about absence with a genuine reason (ie illness, school trips) and absence due to disengagement- ie I remember a thread on here once where loads of parents were saying they would take their child out of school on their Birthday - which just (to me) shows a complete lack of respect for their education.

I'm sure when I went to school this was all more nuanced than it is now. I hate the focus on figures when there is so much underneath it that needs to be explained before deciding what is good and bad.

For me the issue is that its the same rules for GSCE years as for primary.

I took my daughter out for 2 days before May half term so we could get a better flight. Those two days, one afternoon was the class treat, and the day before as the school talent show (which she didn't want to enter). So the loss of learning was absolutely negligible. But she's year 4.

Her loss of school time is absolutely not comparable to a 16 year old doing their exams.

Shes lost more days at school due to hurricaines/snow, school strikes, lockdown and the concrete issue in school buildings.

I just dont get why they cant be flexible - you can take your kid out for a max 4 days, but only before year 5 and preferably only ever other year.