School absence rules are super powering the spread of flu

I've seen lots of kids in supermarkets and shops this week too. Why? Not even private schools have closed yet.

At some point, even if it’s just to address the increased cost of teacher illness which has unsurprisingly risen in line with pupil illness, a more sensible and sustainable approach above enforced illness may happen. Right now, kids and teachers are just told to wash their hands as though that’s going to go far with a plethora of airborne viruses in unventilated classrooms. If someone knowingly visited me whilst still contagious with covid or flu etc, I’d think they were despicable. It is despicable that we do that in schools.

On the topic of whether flu can be milder, I've been poorly for a week and a half, it's felt like more than a cold, the aches and the neck pain, night sweats, fatigue. It's been an annoying, tiring and slow moving virus. I've had flu years ago and knew how bad it can be but what I've had and still recovering from now could certainly be a milder version!

I saw the flip side to the coin yesterday, on my dinner hour I was walking past a shopping centre and I was surprised to see so many kids about in the shops and cafes. The local schools were very much open. I even checked the date on my watch wondering if they'd broke up for Christmas already but that wasn't the case. What were all these kids doing there, you wonder whether they have been kept off school for being unwell yet they've been taken out shopping and for dinner in a cafe! There's a lot of elderly people in the cafes on a weekday too so not a place to be taking a sick kid.

@Accaron
Or they could stop trying to blame kids/ parents and pretending that absences are because they don’t bother to send them - which is vanishingly rare -

It is not vanishingly rare at all. It is very common for parents to keep healthy children off school for various reasons. That’s the problem. It is their job fault of parents.

Most attendance awards don’t expect 100% attendance anyway, so there is already leeway for normal illness.

But those rules are imposed inn the schools. They will be given attendance as a measure. So not the school’s fault.

And you don’t think these conversations happen in every workplace? “Ugh Jackie’s come in and is coughing and spluttering. Brilliant, now we’ll all get ill” versus “Jackie is off again and she’s only got a cold. Now we’re short staffed. She’s such a skiver”. People can’t win.

I work in infants, and sadly we just have to accept it as part of the job. I get the flu jab, and my hands are sometimes sore from all the handwashing but what can you do?

It isn't about them - especially at primary school they have zero agency about whether they go to school or not. So to deliberately cause them distress to manipulate their parent? Unjustifiable.

If we accept that poor attendance reduces educational outcomes then how is this well-documented national scandal allowed to continue, and how will it be solved by encouraging/ coercing/ threatening/ shaming children with contagious viruses/ infections to attend school regardless and therefore exponentially raise the number of other children/ staff who are sick as well?

Or they could stop trying to blame kids/ parents and pretending that absences are because they don’t bother to send them - which is vanishingly rare - or pretending that sick children should be in school, and instead address the systemic structural problems with the design of the state school system which underly over 90% of recorded absences and make it impossible for tens thousands of children to attend sustainably, causing them deliberate and completely avoidable, foreseeable harm and violating their legal right to access education.

I don’t know, like I said, I don’t like attendance awards. But it is a fact that poor attendance reduces successful educational outcomes, and that means there is pressure from the top on schools to improve attendance rates. Children are used because it’s about them, and it is the only thing that might make parents think twice when deciding to book a cheap holiday or have a lazy day off.

The spread of viruses and bacterial infections in schools (even those which are symptomatic almost immediately so are not spreading innocently without parents being aware that they are sending in infectious children) demonstrates very clearly that the problem of parents sending sick children to school who should not be there is far more significant than overly cautious parents keeping children at home.

Various options could be implemented, such as online learning/ teams broadcast of classes so that children who are unwell can still attend in some capacity. Online schools are very successful so this is not beyond the wit of man, given that adult manage hybrid meetings etc. as a matter of course these days. Far more sensible than sending infectious children into school, particularly at secondary level. Then they infect lots more children and staff and make the problem worse. It’s completely unnecessary. Only a selfish idiot would commute on a busy train/ go to work with a stinking cold, for example, so why would we demand children do this?

Schools need to adapt and use the technology at their disposal, which is incredibly cheap and easy to implement and even very small businesses use.

Regardless, as noted above and is clear from academic research, the vast majority of low attendance rates and protracted absence results from children with neurodiversity being forced into an education system which, if one was to set out with the aim of designing hell for such children, would closely resemble the so-called state education system on offer. These children are forced into an environment which it is KNOWN IN ADVANCE they will never be able to cope with or learn properly in and is entirely inappropriate for them.

Teachers and Local Authorities and the Government then express faux surprise when entirely predictably these children end up traumatised and have low attendance rates or are unable to attend at all.

Nationally, over 90% of recorded absence is the result of the above. Yet still no appropriate state educational provision at all is made for these children, and the system deliberately forces them to spend most of their waking life in an environment that’s traumatising for them until they become unable to access any education at all - a systemic and deliberate refusal to meet their legal right to education, which we’d be scathing of a developing country denying to a specific cohort of children. Yet apparently in the UK this is acceptable, the child/ parents should be shamed/ threatened and allegedly this will fix the issue. Gaslighting nonsense and disproved by a great deal of robust academic research, if you care to look.

So if one is rational, one would suggest that if schools or the DfE are concerned about attendance, rather than teaching children that presenteeism is important to learn for adult life (no successful business with talented staff will agree with you) and that it’s ok for children to infect their peers and this will be rewarded and celebrated, so that the school can engage in futile attempts to bump up its absence rates when actually causing more illness and more absence and validating the stance of the irresponsible parents who will even send in their child with a vomiting bug, perhaps it might serve schools, Local Authorities and the DfE well to stop coercing children and bullying parents and address the actual problem underlying the vast, vast majority of their overall attendance rate problem: that they have set up virtually NO state schools whatsoever that are appropriate for the tens of thousands of neurodiverse children who cannot and will never be able to function in a class size of 30 with noise and disruptive behaviour all day long. If they’re also bright and academic they will have more chance of an appropriate state education by going to live on the moon.

Hello large grey animal with excessively sized ears! We see you, and one day the teachers and DfE may also acknowledge your existence.

not for illness. we've just had 10 days off straight. nad were told not to rush back

So why are the children used as pawns? That's a failure on all schools that use this method, it's unjustifiable.

It is terrible for any school to be offering rewards celebrating attendance. It’s not an achievement not to be ill.

If parents could be trusted to only keep their children off school when they are genuinely sick, this wouldn’t be a problem. Schools wouldn’t need to be on a mission to improve attendance but because so many parents take time off for holidays or minor sniffles or days out or duvet days, schools have no choice. It is their job to prioritise education.

Attendance awards are awful, but they exist because of parents, not schools.

Honestly if our school tried to implement this attendance awards nonsense I’d make a formal complaint because it is quite obviously discriminatory and a breach of the Equality Act 2010.

It is terrible for any school to be offering rewards celebrating attendance. It’s not an achievement not to be ill. It’s awful for children who are sick/ hospitalised and can’t attend school without this then being made to seem like some kind of failing on their part. And, indeed, for the children with other disabilities such as autism who make up the vast majority of those with significant absences, not because they need to “try harder” - they are already making a superhuman effort above and beyond other children to attend at all because state education is structured in a way that systematically discriminates against them and makes it almost impossible for them to access education, per academic research e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37810599/. Blaming the children for the utter failure of the Government to meet these children’s legal right to an education is totally unacceptable. If schools or the DfE want attendance rates to improve then perhaps they should stop discriminating against these children who make up 90% of those with significant absences and fulfil their legal duty to provide appropriate schools for them that they can attend without being traumatised.

Yeah they're just awful. Way to make the kids who can't have good attendance due to health and/or familial factors feel shit.

Those rewards are pointless in primary school when it's the parents who decide whether they go in or not.
My kids are in unless covered in blood, projectile vomiting, unconscious, an A&E/emergency GP visit required or unable to get out of bed and stand. Another kid in DS's class only has to fart and gets a day off. Fortunately our school doesn't do those types of rewards.

That's exactly what this is about - I've said that. Can Did you read the comments?

Not for illness...

They fine you if you have more than 5 days off?

That sounds horrendous your poor DD. Do you mind me asking, does she have any underlying health issues that might make infections hit her this hard?

but you haven't made this about your kids anxiety.

you've not said Bob gets anxious about attendance so I let him go in even during the contagious period so help him. you said you don't like schools new attitude so you'll be petulant and if your kid FEEL ok you want them in spreading everything to make a point.

you're making this about you not your kid.

Okay @OhDear111you are obviously on a wind-up. You win. I give up.

Because schools cry about attendance whilst begging parents to be sensible when their child is unwell. Resulting in parents sending in children before they're fully better,and spreading germs to all and sundry. This makes behaviour really great as you can imagine.
Another reason I'm glad not to teach anymore, being ill all of the time.

Ps its us in the infants cooking it all up. Sucking toys, picking noses, sharing dribbly play dough and sucking unifix cubes, then walking to assembly and lunch sliding our hands along the wall. Nice.
Inset days used to be at least half about sorting things out and having a bit of a scrub of the toys. Now its for listening to the head go on and on for a whole day.