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

The over simplification of school attendance and lack of anything really from Labour on SEN provision is very depressing.

My eldest is ND and had an awful time in primary. Even with an EHCP the support and understanding was not there. He is diagnosed with PTSD from this as am I in having to deal with the school. My profession means I should be more able than most to engage with services and advocate for him and it ended up causing me to have a breakdown.

I am extremely lucky that I was able to get him a place in a secondary that has fantastic SEN provision. We’ve gone from fighting to get him into school every day to him being happy to go in. It isn’t even big things that make the difference - just a positive approach to
him and some basic understanding. It is only now becoming clear just how damaging his previous school was to him. I’ve gone from being someone who unquestionably always thought school was ‘right’ and a positive place for my child to be to the opposite.

My NT younger child by contrast naturally enjoys school and finds it easy. It’s very easy for me to get him to school and he has very high attendance. Same parent …

I don't think anyone is honestly still traumatised by lockdowns or school experiences during COVID. I also don't think strikes are causing pupils to skip school, and I would guess absence for medical reasons hasn't changed greatly.

But I do think those of us who were 100% adherent to attendance policies have become less so after finding that school was in fact optional for months at a time when we were least able to cope with that. I don't blame the school at all, because they were open throughout, but most pupils could not attend due to policies outside the school's control. But I no longer believe a few days here and there is going to make any difference at all to anything, most terms.

It's a very complicated situation and I don't think there's a one size fits all solution.

I feel like presenteeism is pointless when we are in an age where we could have work sent home for children.
The big barrier to that is the burden on individual teachers.

If there was a scheme of work developed specifically for home learning to tie into the school's national curriculum (something a lot of homeschooling curricula don't follow) that could be used alongside the existing SoW, then they could just download the right lesson activities and send them to the child to do.

But there isn't a scheme of work like that, and even if there was, what schools are going to be able to pay for another scheme of work when half of them can't afford to update their current school-based ones as often as they'd like!

On the other hand, sending work home doesn't work for kids who don't see the point of school. And I can see where they're coming from as well. Education used to be the key to a good job/career. Nowadays, you can fail as much as you want during your school years and you can still get a job and become an NHS trust manager in 20 years! You can become a social media star and the barrier to accessing this is nothing like the barrier to getting into film/TV. A lot of kids will know at least one social media success story in their own school, even if that success isn't particularly great in adult terms. The job market isn't what it was even 10 years ago. Qualifications are largely meaningless for most career paths. Then people keep saying the environment means the planet is doomed and that AI is going to take everyone's jobs, and kids internalise this stuff and of course they don't see the point in going into school. Of course they're anxious. There's a lot to be anxious about in the world as it is presented to them by the news etc.

If we want kids to care about something as trivial as school we need to dial down all the serious shit and doom mongering and disaster porn (aka "news") on the TV and let them have their childhoods back. They're little adults now, with the pressure to do something big, and school is the waste of time in their way stopping them from doing that.

If the most disadvantaged ones had enough money to eat properly their brains would function better and they would make better decisions (and actually be able to learn). It's not the children's faults that their parents aren't in work or are low earners, and yet they're the ones who are being penalised when their parents' benefits get cut off for spurrious reasons or their parents' work hours are suddenly given to someone else.

And if we want long term sick kids (including serious MH) to go to school we need to fund the NHS correctly and give them meaningful treatment that actually helps them instead of box ticking appointments with someone with no power to actually help them get functional.

Just like in the 1820s when school became mandatory in the first place, adultification of children and pressures on them due to big problems is the main issue, augmented by lack of acceptable medical care.

Targeting individual schools or children doesn't solve the societal problems underlying everything.

I've just had a letter that my yr7 has 4 days off. I know, 2 for an operation, 1 for vomiting amd 1 for being too ill to get there.
I see the 5th day must be C for circumstances as that wasn't mentioned (train strikes mean no way to get there).

But then as a teacher kids are off all the time! So much. It's very irritating at a level as every lesson is important really.

@anothernamechangeagainsndagain and what causes parent apathy?

From what I've seen its cyclical in families with sen who have been endlessly locked out of education because they can't read how the UK teaches it. They fall further and further behind, they are not read too or with at home and the links between the child and education are severed at a very early age. These dc go into have self esteem issues and they ate bored so they fill their time in other ways n

Yes good question.

I think overall this situation will get worse, the focus now is for schools to have specialist provision in mainstream schools for SEN more than now, so fewer specialist provisions.

There isnt the funding nor the staff for this so we'll see more and more childrens needs not being met

I don't know. But all our extra curricular activities got online in days and would make an effort to send personal emails to me to read to the children etc. and many of those extra curriculars are run on a shoestring so it wasn't about funding.

I think any parent who was in two minds about the importance of education feels they've been given a green light to bin it by the cavalier way schools were closed during covid and the way they've been subsequently closed due to strikes.

I’m sick of saying this. Inset days came off the holidays, not the terms. They don’t affect educational hours at all.
Strikes were frequent for a bit, but over 35years I’ve been in strike three times.
New bank holidays? Where? And if there were, that’s not down to schools. Also it’s different in terms of impact on child and school if everyone is off rather than one student missing random days when everyone else is there.

My kids have terrible attendance around 45%. My daughters EHCP is going through appeals and she's been kicked out of 2 mainstream schools. The last school managed her behaviour by excluding her for days at a time. When she's off I can't get my son in to school as he also has additional needs and doesn't understand why he has to go in, she refuses to leave the house. And we end up trapped in. It's hard work. I get threatened with the education welfare officer. But there isn't much I can do. Camhs have been quite supportive but again other than throwing medication at us. No help.
My daughter has been like this since reception and is going into year 5 this year.
She is still doing phonics and her 2 times tables at nearly 10!

Then you agree with Keegan and Phillipson that it is parents who need to be targeted to improve attendance?

Its interesting that you blame the schools for the shit show that ensued as all this was down the government dropping the information at the last minute and requiring schools to deal with it.
Many of the problems that happened during covid were from the the lack of funding for education from many governments.

As for soupfiend get over yourself, you were no doubt of the same group of posters that blamed teachers for everything during covid whilst putting forward the BS from twats4themselves.

This. I work as a finance manager for a MAT and I spend a lot of my time talking to Heads about how we can fund support for children. In my experience the school has to jump through so many hoops to apply for additional support. Then the process takes so long to complete and the school has to fund the support during this process and if the school is successful the grant is generally not sufficient to fund the support required. Anecdotally, my schools have more children coming into Reception with more complex needs than in the past. I wonder if there are any national statistics on this? Once we have the funding we struggle to recruit for the posts.

I then hear Labour politicians talking about providing breakfast clubs for all children. Whilst it is needed for some schools it isn’t required for all children and I just wish someone would commit to funding and supporting schools with SEN provision and fund CAMHS.

And also of course my children can work their butts off and get a very decent career (and probably will given their academics)

But some of their classmates whose parents don't give two hoots about education but who already stand to inherit multiple houses in the south east will undoubtedly be wealthier than my children even if they barely bother attending school.

Some parents are trying to get their kid in school...sadly it's taken most of a term to get school to help. And they are not offering the support required...

Same kid missed half a term of school due to bubbles popping: still effected by this.

Missed all of learning from lockdown one bar a tiny bit of science. (Sen)

Basically whole secondary journey has been fucked by COVID bar one term of Y7 and two terms of Y9 when kids designated support adult was fantastic. (They left)

Can't cope with school when ill even if a different child could due to disability.

The problem is not enough SEN support in school.

As did we all, in all of our jobs. My way of working had to change beyond all recognition. And I somehow had to do that with children at home. Same for DH.

We didn't have time to paddle board or bake or garden. So it was bloody tone deaf getting cheery emails from the teachers at my children's school about what a fun time they were having. While we worked hard to innovate to still deliver our public services

Do they have sympathy for the mental health of staff? Not in my experience.
I speak as someone whose career ended prematurely because there wasn’t any accommodation for burnout. Staff can get signed if for mental health issues the same as any other worker. However schools are very much not sympathetic and very much refuse to make any changes to the circumstances which caused the issues, meaning staff go back and get ill again then leave. In a recruitment and retention crisis.

Im not sure what that reference is but I was busy working full time in a front line client facing role, being sent to properties and houses where I didnt know who would be there, let alone whether they had covid. Without PPE for many months.

I'll get over myself though.

It's the usual thing of a very diverse group being treated as one homogenous whole with a one size solution that doesn't fit anyone.

There are the kids where if a family officer nips round and knocks on the door, parents are asleep/not dressed, kid is watching tv and is delighted to grab their coat and come to school.

There are the kids where they're still asleep because no one in the household went to bed until the early hours.

There are the kids that said no they weren't going this morning, and parents aren't able to handle the behaviours that result from trying to insist on anything the kids don't want to do, but if a member of the school staff arrives on the doorstep the kid will get their coat and come in without a problem.

There are the kids going through a mild phase of separation anxiety or school anxiety almost always associated with a family situation or additional needs, who need a sensitive, careful plan for anything from a few days to a few months (with staff capacity and skills to know how to support this and work with the family.)

There are the kids with radical unmet SEND needs, most often neurodiverse, with sensory processing or with mental health needs (or mental health needs created from massive repeated sensory overwhelm and masked anxiety), who have been on CAMHS waiting lists for months if not years and are being repeatedly bounced from SEND referrals for services, who have often coped in school until they broke, and are the ones being sick, sobbing and becoming violent at home if adults try to force them to come into school. One parent has often had to give up work and the whole family is now in crisis. Often when it reaches the point of an EHCP (often involving parents going to tribunal and getting private assessments because the LA is taking years and their family is now in ruins) the child is found to need specialist provision. And the first job of the specialist provision will be to try and undo the damage created by an unsuitable placement at mainstream being pushed past child, staff and family's full awareness that this wasn't working.

Every group (and there's more groups than that) needs different support and strategies. And a lot of this is covering the holes in the system that we have a lot of kids for whom mainstream is now too fast, too stressful and too conveyor belt, that SEND knowledge and skills varies hugely from school to school, that SEND and medical help involves fighting to get onto a waiting list that can be years long, and that families have almost no recourse when they have a child struggling to cope at home and in school. And that the blame is usually landed on them for poor parenting.

My dc has had six days off since the start of school in September....two viral illnesses where he was genuinely too unwell to attend. I received an extremely snooty letter threatening me with all sorts. My dc always attend school unless genuinely unwell. Makes me fume as I remember my dc being sent home to isolate for ten days...much to my horror. I don't blame the school. I blame the government.

Schools are no longer fit for purpose, nothing to do with covid.
I'm so glad mine are out of the school system.
Its so easy for schools to blame parents when there is absolutely no support in place for SEN.
This is exactly why the amount of home educated students is rising. The information is all free online, free.
There's an excellent maths teacher who kindly gives up his time and knowledge for free. Look at T L Maths on youtube. He has thousands of reviews and followers. My son is HE, follows these YouTube tutorials and passed both GCSE and A levels with highest grades.

@Reepycheepy

That's so sad but obviously you are not alone.
I've had a similar experience with some small things making such a big deal to dd and a little bit of kindness and understanding and can do attitude from one teacher that turned her school life around.

Another problem aside from the embarrassing lack of sen knowledge in education is that edicts get passed down but unfortunately heads snd then teachers put their own spin on what's asked.

We have huge mental health crisis in our country's children. I'm not sure that the blame can be laid at the feet of the parents for that! What's the common denominator in most children... oh yes it's schools. Perhaps we should look there.

My ds is ill again after being ill over the week before Christmas and continuing to be under par over Christmas. He's been back at school 2 days and has obviously picked up something else at school. He has asthma and seems to catch everything going that he then passes to me and I end up on antibiotics and steroids. I really hoped that Covid would put an end to presenteeism but it's seems worse than ever. Ds has anxiety since Covid lockdown sent his older sister off the rails and he missed lots of school thanks to me being shielded and my GP telling me to keep him off to protect myself. He is only ever off if he is too unwell to attend. We are encouraged to send them in with coughs, cold and Covid! I value his education and his teachers are great but damn right I'm taking him out of school for a week for a cheap holiday next month. We had a dreadful Christmas thanks to his older sister (doesn't live with us) and his mental health and mine need the break. I'm a single parent and there's no way I can afford a holiday in the school holidays. He is also ?ASD/ADHD.
Schoo attendance is never going to be solved when provision for SEND and mental health is so poor and while parents are encouraged to send in sick children so that vulnerable ones get ill.

Of course it is parents. The most important factor in educational achievement, more important than how good your teacher or school is, is parental interest in education and how much they value education.
The problem is schools and the gov broke the message so now disadvantaged kids whose parents didn't really understand why attendance is such a big deal as they don't value education that highly anyway and were validated by lockdown and by strikes and schools finishing early one day a week etc. They don't really get that teachers stay for cpd extra late that day so their child gets longer holidays instead of random insets.