Parents to be asked to solve school attendance crisis

[noblegiraffe]

There is an article in the Times about the current school attendance crisis. It cannot be overstated how awful the attendance crisis is. Pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils, are staying away from school in much larger numbers, and for more days than before covid.

It says that lockdowns broke the contract between parents and schools which said that school attendance was compulsory.

It blames parents for keeping their children home when they have a minor illness or are slightly anxious about school.

It quotes Bridget Phillipson, Shadow Education Secretary as saying "If I were secretary of state, I’d be sending a very clear message to parents that every day at school matters, and that irresponsible parents who don’t care about sending their kids to school are harming other kids’ life chances, not just their own"

(Whereas current Education Secretary Gillian) "Keegan will expand a programme that gives children skipping school an attendance mentor who could drive or walk youngsters from their home to school in the morning or negotiate with head teachers on their behalf. She said: “Persistent absence is a hangover from the pandemic affecting schools around the world. Schools and the government cannot do this alone.

“Families play a big part in attendance and parents have a legal duty to make sure their children are at school. I know it can be hard to get children out of the door, especially when they are feeling a bit anxious or have a mild cough or cold, so we must rebuild the social contract between parents and schools and make sure everyone plays their part.”

While lockdowns are brought up, what is not mentioned is the utter state schools were in between lockdowns and after lockdowns. Children were being supervised in halls rather than being taught due to lack of teachers who were ill (and this is still happening now due to inability to recruit). Lack of teachers meaning that kids get endless cover which can be largely a waste of time. Children who are anxious about attending school are expected to get on with it while teachers who are unable to cope with the poor behaviour of students are signed off with stress. The experience of children in schools during and since covid can be extraordinarily shit.

Attendance is much lower in pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. Child poverty is not mentioned - I was reading about a child who couldn't attend school because her mother needed to use the one pair of shoes they shared. Other children are needed to look after younger siblings while parents work because they can't afford childcare. How will this be solved by sending a car around?

But we also know that schools in disadvantaged areas are more likely to struggle to hire staff. What is the point in a child attending school when they don't have teachers? How will Keegan and Phillipson argue that one?

This bit is the most worrying:

"A Labour government, Phillipson said, would place more emphasis on absenteeism as part of the Ofsted inspection framework, with schools compelled to produce an annual report on attendance, off-rolling (removing a pupil without using a permanent exclusion) and safeguarding. Schools are required to submit weekly attendance records to the Department for Education but absenteeism does not have its own Ofsted criteria, instead falling under a broader category of “behaviour and attitudes”.
These reports would affect the Ofsted rating given to schools, which would also take into account the progress they have made in shrinking the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers"

Linking an Ofsted grading to attendance will just doom schools in disadvantaged areas to low Ofsted grades at a time when Ofsted had just started to recognise that grading a school based on disadvantage was a bad idea.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/1d7eb40d-c4c4-4dcc-85ea-ad6f62c65b9c?shareToken=6c4b865c0c1b8626f2761a5ad733b608

My DD has a weekly therapy appointment during school hours, because CAMHS can’t see her outside school hours, so she will always start at 90% and that’s before numerous medical appointments for an ongoing health issue. Add on the usual bugs, coughs and colds and her attendance isn’t great. Not a single thing I can do about it - there’s a real lack of joined up thinking about how services work and the impact on children and their school attendance. Luckily I’m in Scotland where there’s a more measured approach to attendance.

Exactly. Mine are doing very well in school although that's partly because I still pay for tutors on top of school. But if we want an occasional afternoon off to go to the theatre,.or they are feeling unwell, I don't feel even a sliver of guilt. And the school letters about attendance being important are just totally tone deaf when school vanished from their life without so much as a phone call for the best part of a year.

I really value education. And I used to think the school community was valuable too. But they broke that contract when they did a disappearing act at a time when I was still expected to do my job full time.

I would really like the education sector to recognise that strikes have impacted this as well. I appreciate the reasons behind the strikes, but the fact is that covid lockdowns set a precedence that being in school is not always necessary, and strikes came at exactly the right (/wrong) time to cement that impression. That context has to be taken in to account when attempting to push the message of “every day counts”!

My feeling on any discussion about attendance is that it is always way over simplified. The reasons for low attendance are really complicated and really vary. There is no easy answer and all the politicians need to stop pretending that there is!

Things that I think would help include:

• Fixing the NHS. Getting kids the medical help they need to get better, getting them through waiting lists quicker, getting them mental health support, getting them developmental support.
• fixing expectations and budgets in education so that teachers aren’t leaving in droves. For stable attendance, school needs to be a stable place.
• Get families off the breadline.
• Fix the general feeling of hopelessness that’s overcoming the country. Why argue about making your kids to school when everything is shit anyway?

Quite. My six year old child - who finds attending school every day difficult as a result of diagnosed autism, health issues that require hospital appointments and has an EHCP with full time support - spent the evening in tears last term because she had a hospital appointment that couldn't be missed during school time. She hadn't missed an hour apart from that! She actually loves school but she finds it so hard.

The hospital appointment meant she wouldn't get an attendance certificate in assembly and so missed out too on going into a raffle to win a treat. It also meant that she worried for ages that she'd be responsible for her whole class missing out on the class attendance target and that the other kids would be upset with her. She's fucking SIX years old and she missed an afternoon as a result of her disability.

I do get why they do attendance awards but I hate them. They're utterly unfair.

And the school letters about attendance being important are just totally tone deaf when school vanished from their life without so much as a phone call for the best part of a year.

I wrote about this at the time. There is still a huge disparity in education provision but it is far less visible to parents when the kids are at school. There seems to be a mindset that bemoaned school provision during lockdown that assumed it would be fixed by schools reopening. It hasn't been fixed by schools re-opening.

This is awful had very similar with my sons school. We had safeguarding/attendence screaming down the phone making threats etc she was awful. We had to deregister in the end. And it took son to over dose before CAMHS took us seriously.

My Dd refused to go to school any more. ASD .

Why isn’t this being recognised? Why are ND kids being penalised and discriminated against?

My ‘contract’ was broken when schools constantly ignored the reports from psychologists and medical professionals to support my autistic child. Report says let the child doodle on a piece of paper to help child deregulate, teacher takes piece of paper and puts in bin. Report says child might need to be inside at breaktime because it’s overwhelming and chaotic, teachers say they can’t find anywhere for her inside. I could go on.

Now child has 50% attendance rate and just says when she’s upset no one listens so it’s not worth going in.

There does seem to be a basic assumption behind these attendance drives that school is actually a good place for those children to be.

Inset days don't come out of learning days and strike days are hugely necessary unfortunately

Given how serious the first variants of Covid were and that they were prior to the introduction of effective vaccines, forcing them to stay open would have vastly increased the numbers of dead teachers and other school staff, such as caretakers, TAs, finance (who worked from home or in school with very few students around) and other admin (who did the same).

It's not all EBSA and genuinely ill children being ill. It's also feelings of entitlement to cheaper and longer long haul holidays where the amount of any fine is less than the amount saved (and if they were higher, all instead of just some would lie and say the children were ill, but if you make a home visit and they're not there, perhaps that would make the illness excuse unsubstantiated - the money going to the school rather than the council could help pay the costs of attendance teams and funding better SEND provision, thereby helping those who are EBSA?).

I think it should be looked at on inspection - we create reports on attendance and analyse by key vulnerabilities, follow all safeguarding procedures and do as much as possible to give children the safe and appropriate education they deserve, and rates of leavers and possible reasons are important to know - but not as a 'must have all attendance at 98% or they get inadequate' boundary, as that just encourages certain academy chains in particular to offroll or try to break admissions law in the first place (they're bad enough for this as it is).

I think the teachers who had ample time to paddle board/bake elaborate cakes /homeschool their own children (lovely to get photos of that in the weekly lockdown newsletter 😆) could have spent even a slither of that time checking in on the children experiencing an unprecedented lockdown. All kinds of excuses were made at the time why they couldn't. Meanwhile the rest of us had to find ways to still do our (in my case public funded) jobs. I remember warning regularly on here. And when I hear teachers reminiscing about all the lovely things they did during the first lockdown and what a nice break it was I am afraid I do feel pretty enraged. One sat and chatted to me at a party all about what a lovely break it was, oblivious to the fact some people had had to continue to work full time

I wish they could just rename inset days. List them as part of the pupil holiday calendar. Parents don’t need to know which days are being used for that work. Teachers are already contracted to work them, they’re not part of the required learning days, it is literally just a semantic quirk that causes unnecessary misunderstanding and issues.

@noblegiraffe There does seem to be a basic assumption behind these attendance drives that school is actually a good place for those children to be.

School can be a good place for neurodivergent children to be....IF they're properly and correctly supported. Which for the most part currently, they're not.

That's a national issue that the government and local authorities are primarily responsible for. Schools too, but not always. I'd say 50% of the schools (and the staff in them) I've been in to are fabulous, and try so hard. The other half are categorically not.

It is a huge issue with funding, resourcing and training. But it's also a huge culture issue too.

Given how serious the first variants of Covid were and that they were prior to the introduction of effective vaccines, forcing them to stay open would have vastly increased the numbers of dead teachers and other school staff

What is largely ignored by those who bemoan schools closing in March 2020 is that there was no way they could have remained open. It wasn't a case of them being able to soldier on and were closed out of unwarranted fear. Many had already closed or partly closed due to staff absence and those that remained open were teaching to increasingly empty classes as parents voted with their feet. The kids that were kept home weren't getting any provision at all as they were voluntarily absent.

Teaching in a school in March 2020 was an extraordinary experience. It was literally unsustainable.

I have a child who has barley attended for 3 years and who currently has tuition etc funded instead, away from school.

She is clever and friendly and well behaved and desperately wants to attend school. But she is also autistic and cannot handle school at all, she becomes mentally unwell very quickly whenever she tries to return.

I do believe though, that if she had been in primary school 15 or 20 years ago, she would be attending a lot more and wouldn’t struggle so much.

Pre-SATS, schools were very different, well before the covid pressures. There seemed to be so much more room to play and learn and the teachers were warmer and more patient (and I understand why they are not so much now, I am not blaming teachers!)

So, I wonder if more autistic children are actually being diagnosed with earlier (and not being able to cope with school is sometimes the factor that really highlights the need for assessment and support) just that we are in a system that breaks anxious children much earlier.

Both sound crap but I am more with current ed sec at the moment because labour has seems to be more stick driven.

I prefer the idea of a mentor who can build relationships with the families snd children and tackle the reasons why dc are not attending

It stands to reseaon that families who value education won't be allowing dc to skip school endlessly.

As a parent I'm actually very happy to let dc have the odd day off even if they don't seem to at deaths door. Their over all attendance is v good and they are both driven high achievers.

So let's say theirs slipped under, attacking me would be a pointless waste of resources.

The families where this happens have far deeper issues. It's the deeper issues that need tackling.
You are not going to get families to play ball by shouting at them "it's your responsibility to get dc to school". Many of these families will themselves have fallen out of education and probably sat bored and un engaged for years due to undiagnosed and unsupported sen.

Exactly this, shop staff, nurses, police officers, housing officers, social workers, fire fighters, the list is endless of people that continued to work directly with the public while schools were closed. Everyone was at risk but continued to work face to face with people, they didnt have a choice

All those teachers that couldnt continue in the classroom still went shopping etc

The point is, even if you say that was justified (and for me it wasnt), it broke the contract, it said school was not important and parents and pupils have taken the message and run with it

So yes, people will now book holidays during term time and be less focused on going in if the child is a bit tired. Added to that the huge MH issues that lockdowns caused for children, why is it a surprise

Its for schools to fix. Perhaps with acknowledgement that the decision to close was misjudged.

As a teacher (and mum) I wholeheartedly agree!

This thread shows a big part of the issue. Can we PLEASE stop arguing over whether schools should have closed. They did. Full stop. That had a huge negative impact. Now let’s discuss how to get past that impact, not go back over the same old tired arguments over whether it was the right thing.

Yes. SEN provision in schools is dire due to cuts in SEN provision, but also because difficulties in recruitment mean a constant churn of TAs and teachers. What neurodivergent children often really need is routine and stability, with adults who know them well. This is very much lacking in schools these days.

They almost certainly needed to close. But that didn't mean my children should have had zero contact from school for most of a year.

Every other sector had to innovate and find ways to still keep going. As a minimum children should have still had some contact from school.

The problem existed before covid. Dd1 went to school in an area with a large low income population and getting the parents to send their kids to school was a nightmare - I was at the school a lot, send issues, and got to know staff well, they were very honest with me - parents kept their teens home to look after younger kid, keep them company, because they couldn't be bothered to wake them and most of all because they couldn't see the point of going to school 14+ obviously lots of individual reasons but not valuing education was the main one. They had staff that went around fetching students by minibus, there were showers, washing machines, free breakfast and a multitude of other interventions to help mitigate crap living conditions, send department was excellent. You can do everything as a school but parent apathy is hard to overcome. That school gets a new head parachuted in every couple of years at great expense to the LEA including ones who have turned around schools elsewhere yet they cannot overcome the parents not sending them to school

@soupfiend @forcedfun

We had a mix, some schools got on line within days and carried on as usual. Dx who weren't present on line were chased and followed up because registers were taken. Some dc had phones and the odd child who didn't was helped out.
So what's the difference between those schools and the ones who didn't answer emails, certainly didn't chase missing pupils or take on line lessons etc and took an obstructive stance to educate children?
Whilst the others were ploughing ahead?

Of course your children should have had contact from the school.

Personally, as a teacher I was on my own phone phoning kids every week, while setting work for them, and while homeschooling my own kids, so I'd prefer if you didn't generalise your individual experience to the whole sector.