To think people want to wrap kids up in cotton wool now?!

For me it was hard for my DD in nursery as she would pick up bugs and be over them fast however DH and I would be knocked for weeks. For me, months sometimes as I’m sensitive to sinus issues. Just recently it took me over three months to fully recover from a cold. Thankfully working from home is an option for me and in the office we have little meeting rooms we can work from individually.

We obviously picked up bugs from nursery and I’ve seen kids run around snotty-nose and coughing. I hate putting my DD in that environment but I need to work too. I find if I’m at home all the time I go stir-crazy and crave to see people. I hate the whole illness cycle for that reason as well as it is isolating as a parent sometimes and then you’re more isolated with a sick kid or your own illness as you stay away from everyone and everything. So it never ends. I think parents will probably try to give kids medicine to cover symptoms and when teachers find just how sick the kid is, too late, germs already gone everywhere. There are always going to be parents that do this. I hate it but can’t do anything but make sure my DD is not sick when going to school and manage my symptoms too.

Thing is, it might not be just a cold. It might be RSV and passing it on to people with babies or other vulnerable people in their family could lead to hospitalisation or even death (I know this from my own experience).

It's not easy - I don't disagree. Modern society and kids being ill aren't compatible. But there is no correlation between how difficult/ impossible it is to manage with some full time jobs ( I don't disagree) and the conclusion that kids should therefore be in school when ill.
That's not the answer to the problem, it just exacerbates the problem, as other posters have mentioned.

Because as I said, colds aren't just colds for every child.

My son has his temperature taken all of the time when he's unwell. It's essential for him but not every child.

Just my personal experience but if my child gets a temperature they are more likely to vomit or be lethargic neither of which is the schools problem to deal with other children will be fine with a temperature mine just arnt

We should be friends lol, I find the world a bit mad atm tbh and will probably end up on the wrong side of hr as a manager but so be it, let them replace me with someone who can barely hit 60% attendance 😂

Yes of course my kids go to school with a cough/cold/sore throat. Would obviously be off with D&V or the flu, but otherwise in they go, just as I would go to work with the same.

Clearly if they were lethargic and needing to stay in bed then I’d keep them off but usually they’ll have some ibuprofen and be good to go.

D&V or a temperature and I keep mine off. Anything else no.

My middle school had one. I remember sitting in it waiting for my mum to me pick me up.

Why though? What is the fascination with temperature? I didn’t even have a thermometer in my house with my 2, now 29 and 26, and I also only recall ever having my temperature took at the doctors when I had mumps, 🫣 I have so many parents calling in to work saying their kids have a temperature & they need to take them to the doctors?!?! Normalised process in a business is 3 periods of sickness in a 12 month period before sickness monitoring begins, I’ve had one day in 8 years and that was because I was admitted to hospital on my off days and they were faffing about discharging me, have I been to the docs in that time for things, yes many many times, have they offered me sick notes? Yes many many times but have I hand in heart felt that I’ll that I couldn’t manage to go to work? Nope! My grandad always used to say if you saw a five pound note on the floor outside the house and you physically couldn’t go out to pick it up that is the only time you are ill enough not to go to work & have lived by that since!

I remember being off school when I was poorly in the 1980s. I rarely have sick days as an adult. I will allow my children to stay off if they feel unwell, it's a rare event. I don't get the link between sick days and resilience?

There's a number of clashing pressures going on.

Unrealistic government targets turning schools into the middle man. Some bad luck with an illness like flu or chronic illness can hammer the data, especially in the autumn term. Common illnesses are weighted towards the first half of the school year.

Lack of support for SENs. Lack of appropriate school places, lengthy waiting lists, restricted curriculum options and tight budgets. This is a significant driver of persistant absenteeism. A relatively small proportion of persistant absentees has a major impact on whole-school data.

Children can't be "signed off" in the way that adults can. Their access to medication is more restricted than adults (much easier for me to dose up and function than my DCs). Access to primary care for prompt treatment for moderate illness is harder than it once was so illnesses can escalate. (I once couldn't get DC to the GP for a chest infection- litterally had texts saying "we have no appointments, don't ring" and his asthma ended up later escalating to 999 and a week off school)

2020/21 policies did damage home/ school relationships and boundaries on illness. Some people did keep under the weather children off (rather than ill), or preventative absences more than before enabled by increased WFH.

Cost of living has pushed the saving of term time absence vs school holiday peak costs. A week here or there seems pretty trivial compared to 4 + 2 months being kept out of school then repeated 10 day isoloations for a mildly sniffly classmate.

Safeguarding means schools have to be more proactive about monitoring absence.

Illness can be quite a nuanced issue and government policies have turned it into a blanket issue.

I don't appreciate having clearly ill children existing miserably in my classes. Schools are too reluctant to let clearly ill children go home and it's a false economy on spreading illnesses further, but equally it is normal to plough on using over-the-counter remedies for feeling a bit below par.

Meh, coughs/sore throats/runny noses are miserable. I don’t want them myself, so I don’t particularly want my child in school picking up the germs that cause them from other children who’ve been sent in to school when they’re obviously unwell.

Admittedly, I only work PT and fully remote in a very flexible role, which is a privileged position to be in when it comes to managing school absences, but if my own child is unwell then I do the considerate thing and keep them home.

When I worked in a school the rule of thumb was if the child was running a temperature and was obviously unwell, the child stayed home. On the other hand if the child was just a bit under the weather with say a sniffle or runny nose the child goes to school and the staff will monitor and would phone home if child became more unwell. It worked well in my school.

Not taking time to recover from illness isn't resilience, it's a stupidity most of us are forced into.

Wow. That is just cruel.

I get so sick of ‘school isn’t childcare’ being trotted out as some sort of ‘gotcha’. For the vast majority of childed households, both parents need to work, and a routine is planned around normal school hours. When a child is sick enough not to be in school, the wheels come off. It’s not surprising, though a great shame, that this means children who really need to be at home end up being sent to school. Add in the manic focus on attendance stats and you get germ soup.
It was better when it was possible for one parent to be more available during the primary school years. The current set-up is horrible for everyone.

I do get what you’re saying, 17yo got an awful land when he rang into work saying he had a cold and they asked how sick he was. They told him he could just work out the back. In real life in a lot of jobs you need to be crawling on the ground to not go in! If they’ve something like a cold and have energy, normal temp, eating, drinking and going to the bathroom normally I’d think they’d be fine to go in

There needs to be a balance. I’m Indian origin. I know parents who are currently trying to get their kids receiving Cancer treatment into school everyday without any consideration to how they’re feeling on the day.

NHS guidance:
“Coughs and colds
It's fine to send your child to school with slight cough or common cold symptoms, such as a runny nose, sore throat or headache, as long as they're otherwise well and do not have a high temperature.
But if they have a high temperature, keep them off school until the temperature has gone.
Encourage your child to throw away any used tissues and to wash their hands regularly.”

I can see both sides. Of course if children are actually unwell (not just a runny nose) then they shouldn’t go in to school and spread it around. Teachers don’t want them to do that either!
There are actually NHS guidelines for whether a child is too sick for school:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/is-my-child-too-ill-for-school/

But my DS for example will get a cough that goes on for weeks in the winter, he’s perfectly fine aside from the cough, so he has to go in!

However there are a lot of children who are regularly off school for ‘illness’ when actually they just don’t want to / can’t / won’t go in. In my school there are some pupils who are off a day week with one illness or another. Stomach ache / headache / feels sick / feels hot etc. These aren’t little kids, these are teenagers, nearly adults (and they don’t have an underlying medical condition).
So either we have a significant number of children with incredibly poor immune systems - or they are avoiding going to school, and as it’s under the guise of ‘illness’ it’s hard for schools to tackle this. I mean, it’s really not normal to be ill one day a week!
It does seem that some teenagers just can’t cope with doing 5 days a week of school / college. I don’t know how they will manage when they get a job.

Private schools do @savoycabbage. Our school has a full medical rooms with 2 nurses onsite the entire day.

A bit of a runny nose but otherwise fine and they probably need to be in. But if they are sick/ill they should be at home. I had mumps, measles, rubella, chicken pox andthe usual stomach bugs / colds and there was no issue about being at home. Schools run like businesses these days.

Eh? The job market is known to be completely shit right now. And aren't most teens studying?

At any rate, if you send your kids in sick and you go in sick yourself and it's no problem because of all this fantastic resilience, what were you complaining about earlier? You said it was a problem when your kids and then you all got ill in succession but if you all just go on to school and work anyway, what's the issue?