“No days off November”

Ohhhh dont i have 3 children b14 g11 g10 my youngest daughter has terrible anxiety (myself and narcissist violent husband he is DCs dad have split and things have been very hard) Dd does not like school and will cry or say she is unwell I have the attendance officer on my case constantly to the point she has made my mental health really bad .... texts at 7am is DD going to school today... any issues let me know.... I think your struggling let me know.... can I call to see you today.... even turned up down my mothers!!!

I was living in the UK 25 years ago and reading the papers. I think the catalyst was the high number of Muslim parents who would take their family back to the rural village of origin for possibly up to two years, the children would receive very little to no education while there and, upon returning to the uk, would be sent to school as if nothing had changed. But in the course of those years, much had been missed and much had been lost.

So, in response to, the government had to make it more uncomfortable to leave than to stay.

I think I noticed and remembered because it’s so different to Australia. Kids are taken out of school all the time, to do a lap of the country, home schooling is picked up a normal course of events and they just go back to school when they come home. But the state education departments are set up here to make it easy.

Well that’s going to be hard my son since he’s having surgery next week and will be off for the entire month! They’re already telling me I need his specific recovery time off in writing (with evidence) so I don’t get fined - yes because everyone who has surgery always recover at the exact same time

Our now Academy prevents end of term treats for anyone whose attendance that term isn’t 98% .
if you have been ill, or had medical appointments, this is not disregarded, you miss the treats the others get.
Hence my child sitting in a classroom with 5 others as they’d been off with chest infection, whilst the others had pizza from a van the school brought in .

Another time he was on a school,trip, when his friend who’d been off sick was excluded, for that reason.

completely unfair and embarrassing for them

When schools are shut down for a "deep clean" because someone went in and gave everyone norovirus, it seems insane to demand that ill children go in.

Children can’t stay off school with every sniffle though?

It’s a terrible idea, very cruel to children with health issues or other difficult situations, as well as incredibly irresponsible. It will directly lead to more children getting ill, and more children developing chronic illnesses.

My son is in ‘red’ according to an email from school. His godfather does the first day they went back in September- his cousin is this best friend- the whole thing was really traumatic for us so we spent a day or two with them.
Then he got a knee infection (no, no idea either) he couldn’t bear weight and had a black potato sized / shaped lump on his knee. We took him to GP who referred him to hospital who sent him to a specialist unit.
Then be had flu. Proper flu. I had it at the same time - this is the first week in 5 weeks I’ve not panicked that the griping pain in my stomach doesn’t mean I am about to poo myself and that I’ve not fallen asleep every time I sat down.
I have not been able to travel for business, for a month, purely because I cannot rely on my stomach.
it is insane that school have emailed to say he is at risk of not being able to take part in their ‘leavers’ programme as he’s on ‘red’.

When classmates comes to school with a cold, my asthmatic dd ends up at home on steroids. These campaigns are counter-productive.

Surely most parents work these days? So a primary-age child can't just randomly take a day off because "they feel like it?"

Absolutely, couldn’t agree more. Here, if there’s a bunch of unexplained absences, you’ll get a friendly call from the principal or school secretary to check in, which is 100% correct. I’d imagine, in many instances, the school team who see the child day in and out will already have an idea if these absences are potentially the sign of a wider issue or maybe just a tough period for the family that the school could potentially support them through. But the schools here in Ireland don’t just send blanket threats, fines etc if your child has missed X amount of days. The English system is completely ludicrous imo.

Definitely an issue in England - not sure about Wales.

PP has said it’s not an issue in Scotland.

I’ve moved to NI from England and its actually a bit of an eye opener how much some people take kids out of school for holidays.

I do think there is merit to working with families when attendance is poor to try to understand the reasons behind it, in case any can be helped. For little ones if parents are juts not bothering to bring their kids to school that is an issue. But you might have parents struggling with their own health or that of one of their other children which means their other children miss out. People living in poverty may have no clean uniform on a given day.
Schools could be signposting for support instead of draconian approaches. I really detest the way some of the big academy trusts are run.

Ah, my apologies, just an England thing then!

It’s not an a UK thing though, I’ve never had any problems taking my kids out in Scotland. The school are clear they don’t give work away with them which is fair enough but I’ve never had the nonsense that gets served south of the border.

And what’s wrong with having a random day off now and again? Our children work hard at school and, unlike us working adults, have mandated work to do at home AFTER their day is done. As far as I’m concerned, if my DC wants a MH day or rest day once in a while, I see nothing wrong with that. (As long as they are otherwise working hard to achieve their potential)

I wonder what has made the UK system change so drastically? In Ireland, I think you can miss upwards of 20 unexplained days before there is any sort of formal referral, it seems to be so much less in the UK? And, I need to look into the stats, but anecdotally our school refusal rate seems much, much lower.

I’ve read threads on here about people missing family weddings and other important life events because they can’t take the children out of school, it’s all just so bizarre. Our children are OURS, not property of the DofE!

PS thank you for the new word - Had never come across a trebuchet before!

It's also unpleasantly ironic how many children who are the victims of bullies are just too frightened to come in to face them - when schools dismiss, gaslight and insist that they don't have any bullying and/or the victim "just needs to learn resilience" - and then guess who gets punished and blamed for it...?

It was like that here in the UK when I was at school in the 1980s.

It sounds like your educational system has kept their common sense; whereas ours has put theirs in a trebuchet and fired it into the back of beyond.

Honestly, I’m always baffled by the threads on here about UK school attendance, about warning letters, fines and referrals to social services. I’m in Ireland and we have very little of this nonsense but arguably a better education system and educational outcomes than the UK. Of course, if a child is missing an extraordinary amount of school days, the school will speak with the parents, raise safeguarding concerns if required etc. but we don’t have this level of ridiculous control. And we certainly don’t have nonsense awards or challenges around attendance.

For example, if I want to take my DC out for a week’s holidays here and there, I do. I inform the school we’ll be on holidays and they say ‘Oh lovely, have a nice time’. Admittedly my DC is academic and does very well at school, I also don’t take them out at key times during the year. But equally, I’ll be damned if a school thinks they can tell me when I can and cannot allow my DC to be off school. It’s all so alien to us here.

But it's not, though. As we've already seen clearly upthread, schools fire out the threatening and judgmental letters regardless of the reason.

My DS's school recently sent out a letter (to all parents) where they acknowledged that some children do sometimes have legitimate reasons for not attending, but they actually said that 'this will still count against them'.

It's absolutely disgusting - and very frequently blatant ableism. It reminds me of the equally nasty, openly prejudiced and anti-diversity, anti-equality schools I've read of more than once who have actually told off and threatened to punish black kids for having very normal Afro hairstyles.

This is obviously not aimed at children who have illnesses that necessitate multiple appointments or periods of absence.

It's about the ones who just have a random day off when they don't feel like coming in. The number of these is too great and it's only causing trouble.

Sorry, I quoted the wrong post. I had intended to reply to this post.

And how do these children achieve good attendance? Through having engaged parents. Parents who support their children’s education, support good behaviour in class (and probably out of school as well), show their children that they value their children’s education, show active interest in their children’s education.