To think that mass non-attendance at school is COVID-related?

I also think schools were really feral and violent back in the 80/90s when I was in going. Or at least mine was! No pastoral care, no wellbeing team.

Where I live pre covid CAMHS waiting lists were 3 years for CBT and 6 months if your child was actively attempting suicide. Criminally bad. Now they’re just ignoring anyone who’s not self harming or worse.

Well CAMHS etc wasn’t around years ago and most kids went to school.

I’m in Scotland. They’ve banned school permanently excluding pupils. So pupils know they can do whatever they want and nothing will happen. And then the police have been told that people under 25 shouldn’t be imprisoned, so that’s fun too. There’s a guy in my kids school who is regularly charged by the police with assaulting classmates and nothing ever happens. This is SNP’s Scottish government. Utterly, knuckle-draggingly mindblowingly idiotic decisions made over our kids education by complete and utter morons.

Yes and much worse.

I’ll give you a concrete(real life) example so it’s a bit clearer what I mean.

For various reasons(including the fucking ridiculous fearmongering), Jimmy develops severe health anxiety during Covid . A classmate blowing a raspberry at him or sneezing out send him in a full blown panic attack that he is going to die. Children (and schools by extension) are dirty little things. Every single day makes his anxiety worse (despite nothing bad happening) because he sees more and more germy things and behaviours. He washes his hands so obsessively they’re bleeding raw. The people and things he used to take comfort in (soft toy, calming corner , sensory room, the kind TA/teacher ready for a chat or a hug,friends/classmates) are talking , walking, killing germs. CAMHS has a wait list of 3 years and “he’s not that bad anyway” or “he’ll grow out if it”, he’s too young for medication,GP useless if you can get an appointment (other than prescribing cream for the hands), private zoom therapy doesn’t work and every single day he gets worse because there’s no escape.

Now Jimmy is not the only one , despite being quite an extreme case. There were hundreds of kids like him though , at various points of the spectrum (some even worse) that waited years for some actual, practical support which as you know , doesn’t give instant result anyway.

In your opinion , When exactly should Jimmy have gotten over it and more importantly, how?

Then kids and their parents expected to just get on with it like it never happened.
But like you say, it was five years ago. When do you suggest would be a reasonable time to take up our lives again and move on??

Christ alive, is that usual in schools?

Some of the ways Covid contributed are:

The break in the social contract , not only school was cancelled last minute, but whole year groups would be sent home . It wasn’t just ok, but recommended and advised to keep your kid home with a sniffle, mild cough, cold, mild fever etc.

The massive backlog in all support services, especially SS, SEN, mental health.

The realisation for a lot of kids and parents that the school environment only made their issues worse and then having to go back.

The rise in anxiety and panic attacks heavily promoted by the media with deaths and threats of “you’re killing granny!”. Then kids and their parents expected to just get on with it like it never happened.

The vast inequality in the quality/type of schooling and support given during those years.

A lot of schools massively struggled financially to offer the best they could at home and in schools. The government support never materialised or it was some bollocks to help “catch up” of “you’re entitled to 1.5 laptops”.

All this added up and it might’ve been 5 years ago , but things are not back to normal. Services definitely aren’t.

Yup.

The lesson that was taken is that school is a nice to have, something that doesn't have to happen if there's a good enough reason. The existing social contract on regular attendance was more fragile and recently established than some people realised, and we eroded it.

That said, it isn't the only factor by any means. Clearly there's a huge issue with suitable schooling for SEN kids too. This is interwoven with the pandemic also, but it would still be a problem even if we'd never had covid.

Haven’t noticed it.

I know what you mean BUT this is incredibly unhelpful thinking when you are dealing with EBSA. I was dictated to by grandparents and ex that my DC should not be allowed anything, should be in uniform, even that the heating should be off so home would be so awful they would go to school - she actually loved learning and was desperate to be there but COULDN'T. The first thing that despairing, desperate parents get told is turn off the wifi. It just makes children who are already struggling even more isolated.

I think a huge issue is that non attendance is due to multiple factors and therefore there is no one answer as to what the solution is, but that is far too nuanced and messy for the media and politicians. They want to deal with old fashioned, just be can't be arsed truancy and EBSA in the same way. They want to deal with parents the same, regardless of if they don't keep a fuck and collude with the absence or if they are on their knees, in danger of losing their job and tearing their hair out trying to get support. They want the percentages to look good on a graph and in a headline. Unless and until there are people in place, with funding and training who actually get this, thigs won't improve.

Look up "emotional based school avoidance" and "children and teenage mental health crises".
Frightening times.

I'd be wary of such stats, as until last year, it wasn't compulsory to share live attendance data - some of the schools could easily have had far worse attendance and illegal exclusions but never shared it - or even altered the records prior to submitting Census data. That's now not anywhere as simple to do (and I'm certainly not going to share the theoretical way to do it to get past the DfE) - and not complying with the requirement to share live would also mean sparking interest in a school's records.

(ETA: In addition, fewer circumstances can be authorised, lateness being recorded as an absence is more strict, part time timetables to meet needs are being recorded as being absent as per the pre-Labour government's requirements, etc, etc).

It's the best data they have to work with, but it is inherently flawed to a greater extent than the last year.

I think screens are a factor too. When I was off ill as a kid I was bored shitless at home after a few days when I started to feel better. Now with phones, smart tvs, Xbox, PlayStation etc being home is a lot more fun.

To an extent, yes. When you make clear that opening pubs is more important that kids going to school you lose a great deal of credibility when you then try say how important it is that kids attend school. It doesn't help it was followed by a bunch of teachers' strikes. The whole thing had the effect of completely undermining the "school's important" message.

you don't think it has anything to do with the chronic underfunding of CAMHS, years long delays in getting diagnoses, ECHPs and simultaneously schools becoming bigger, more inflexible and less able to manage behaviour, so making settings even more unsuitable for kids with and without SEN?

I don’t think it’s COVID related but I do think people like to use it as an excuse. I think it’s due to lack of discipline and consequences, whether that’s the kid not attending school, parent or the behaviour in the school.

I suppose it increases the chance of successful outcomes for those who are attending as the pool of realistic applicants for jobs will reduce. Good or bad whichever side of the fence you are on.

It’s ‘inclusion’ that broke my kids. When a school had no means of addressing violent bullies because they have to be ‘inclusive’ to the violent bully so many quiet, well behaved kids who are keen to learn find their mental health being utterly crushed. It’s criminal.

I really don't think that's reasonable. To spend decades, your whole adult life underperforming or struggling with MH in some way for 18months of disruption when you were tiny? No. You make a choice to continue to blame something from that long ago or you make a choice to make positive changes to make up for any detrimental effects.

No it's a lot of different things; unsupported SEN/MH, chaotic home environments, bullying not addressed. How can it just be one thing in isolation? Nothing related to social trends ever is.

It could also just be that it is closely monitored and more scruinised now now than it was before, and is therefore seen as an issue. People like to blame COVID for things still, but they also like to blame pupils/parents for things that the LA and school fail at. Schools are not meeting the educatuonal needs of some the children and absence is an easy thing to blame.

Mostly due to a lot of people still WFH, so they don’t feel they have to push their kids to attend anymore - the childcare element of school attendance is not so pressing.

Covid and the lockdowns broke something.

I find on here, those who were very pro-lockdown, “stay the fuck at home” types are the first now to tell others who were a lot more concerned about the long term repercussions to just “get over it, it was 5 years ago” etc.

Anyone who expressed concern about NHS backlogs or effects on young people and their mental health were shouted down as granny killers and covid deniers.

Shameful time.

No need to be snippy. Scottish school summer holidays have ended

Probably a whole host of things contribute not limited to:

• uptick in children being diagnosed ASD
• violence in schools
• permissive parenting