To think the Ofsted inspector who blames WFH parents for low attendance is probably just resentful?

The comment about Westminster clearing out on Thursday night is very ignorant.
Friday is the day that MPs generally do constituency stuff.
So on Thursday afternoon they'll be travelling back to their constituencies (some hundreds of mikes away).
On Fridays they'll be running advice surgeries, catching up with constituency staff, going to meetings about local issues etc.
It's not a day off to piss about.

Agreed.

i have actually read the full article. In terms of the new report card - I agree with what he says. Frankly the unions seem to want no report cards at all except one saying ‘fabulous of course’.

on the WFH - the stats in the article for not ‘support’ him. They are meaningless. Correlation does not equal causation. He has not identified the cause - he’s just got an opinion.

Oliver said several other factors were also affecting attendance, including poor mental health, such as anxiety and depression,and a lack of funding for services such as school nurses and child psychologists, as well as difficulties luring children away from their screens.

I love how this is just one paragraph, and no mention of physical health and waiting times for diagnosis/treatment (for all types of health), but going on and on about parents in their slippers being a bad example.

Yeah, it's all bollocks.

How is that relevant?

This is my problem with the war on WFH. In years past, fewer women had big jobs. We need big jobs now to pay half mortgage. Plus everything costs more. My school has just asked us for two trips to bloody theme
parks. Zero educational value but £100+ required to foot the bill. We’re all killing ourselves to work more but yet it’s impossible without an element of WFH and flexibility. But schools and all these so-called ‘important people’ now want to take that off us too!

100% this. Normalise being ill and staying home because a parent has used their own judgement. I’m sick of being harassed by the school to fill in forms and then take further phone calls even though I’ve done the forms in first instance in a timely fashion. I only keep my child off if they’re sick!

In years past it was the norm for one parent to work and one to stay home what was attendance like back then?

It's immaterial whether anyone thinks it's a poor excuse. Don't conflate should and is.

If I'm wrong about the change in social contract, I'm wrong because I've misidentified that, not because someone isn't happy about the implications.

I don't know what long term impact this might have. There's clearly no automatic statute of limitations on shifts in social attitudes, though. Neither is a view that national finances require higher school attendance going to do anything to change parental attitudes in itself.

But ‘Cos Covid’ really doesn’t cut it now. It’s a poor excuse. Will we have adults refusing to work because they couldn’t go to school for a term and a half when they were in Year 2? The country’s finances won’t stand for it, hence the hardening of attitudes.

I don’t think so. It really means very little to them now. In fact the ‘children’ who feel they were impacted are now at university. I would move on from focusing on the impact of Covid and perceived issues with parents working from home and have a good, hard look on the impact of technology on children. It is affecting concentration, behaviour, energy and even levels of anxiety. All of these lead to children underperforming in schools and maybe even a rise in absence (in my opinion).

😅, so true. Whilst in bed, updating MN about their very important jobs at every opportunity.

He is an idiot.

1. a lot of children had/have a stay at home parent. so? Is that encouraging truancy!?
2. Its actually very stressful to work with a child to take care

a huge proportion of the listed workforce are homebased workers and have been for years before the pandemic

really strange sentiment

I don't know one person who works from home who doesn't use it to reduce the amount that's childcare they need. Literally anyone would do the same.

The second sentence doesn't follow the first. People often have family locally, or a part time parent who's not in that day, or a SAHP. They might work outside the home, but do shifts. As a pp pointed out, this assumption is underpinned by the idea that work is always Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.

Well you're doing everything you can to avoid it! If you liked it you would answer but you keep on deflecting.

If you don't WFH there isn't the option to have your DC with you. So you have to take a day off.
WFH parents seem to attempt to carry on WFH with a child who is poorly, and doesn't have to take leave (be that annual leave, lieu, unpaid etc).
Seen it in my workplace. And I'm an absolute nightmare if you try to tell me you need to 'WFH tomorrow as no childcare' no.. you need to book the day off.

If the point here is WFH enables parents more flexibility so they therefore are more inclined to keep a child at home, then there is a point to the article.

Sorry it wasn't you. I meant to put PP but automatically did autocorrect.