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

@Tumbleweed101
“She is my fourth child and I've never known it as bad as it is now I feel sorry for children just starting their education journey with things so unsettled through the system”.

Sadly the behavioural and recruitment aspects of the problems in education aren’t new, DD (last of 4 DC) whom I wrote about earlier is now in her 30’s. My first three DC went to well-rated comprehensives in Greater London suburbs but problems with recruiting staff and class discipline had got so bad that we opted for the independent sector for her. The attendance issues may be partly due to lockdown, but obviously not the others.

Yes ds didn't see the point of computer science at gcse but dd thought it'd be useful. She is planning on doing IB in sixth form and one of the options is computer science- she's giving that a wide berth!

The adults are all happily pontificating on the issue and rightly so. However, the big elephant in the room is screen addiction and social media across society and excessive gaming/early porn etc too. Many kids became addicted during Covid. Early years are also pointing to screens being blamed for lack of fine and gross motor skills and attention issues.

I wonder what would happen if overnight all social media became illegal for under 18s with an obligation on the sites to enforce properly. Without Snapchat, TikTok challenges etc the kids would be better behaved I reckon. Banning it during school hours is probably not enough.

I think schools have tried to educate parents but most are not in control. I will freely admit that this is and was the number 1 challenge between start of secondary school and Year 10, especially during Covid. I am ok with binges on sweets and Netflix high school dramas. So even the privileged parent faces the social media nightmare and even the top private schools have to contend with it, regardless of huge amounts of cash/funding.

Staying home is more fun than school if you have screens. And more tempting. And late screen use leads to tiredness, lack of exercise, healthy food habits etc the list goes on and on. Living virtually is also part of the problem.

"Which countries have banned TikTok? | Mashable" https://mashable.com/article/tiktok-ban-countries

Tik tok is sinister and should be banned. It drives social unrest in children never mind adults

We need to also query the meaning/definition of “persistent absence”. Personally, if my DC were to miss 12% of school in a non exam year due to illnesses and other factors I would not be that concerned. There is a huge difference between those attending 80-90% of the time, still classed as persistently absent VS those who really are severely absent. And from what I can see the latter figure has risen from 1% to 1.7%. So let’s say 2 in 100 children are basically school refusing?

DD’s former grammar always had a lot of persistently absent girls by Government definition standards due to higher than normal diagnosed and undiagnosed autism spectrum disorders/anxieties. When I say “milder”, I mean the type of child that fits some of the criteria but not most. Most of the girls emerged just fine in the end after the hormonal upheavals and many just needed downtime at home. So for that category of child, if in an otherwise educated and supported environment, higher than expected absence can be less of an issue. It may actually be good for them in some cases. If you have a DD who pushes herself too hard in all aspects then sometimes insisting on having a day off is actually a good thing. And a child who is really academic and does not want to go in to the daily disrupted environment because they would rather revise at home in a more efficient manner? I do not really see the problem if the parent is home and working too.

90% attendance is a day off per fortnight. 80% is a day off per week.

That really is quite a lot.

Totally unavoidable for kids with lots of appointments though - mine has a fortnightly appointment at her main clinic (blood test in the morning, wait around for results and then see consultant in the afternoon) and various others on a
monthly to 3 monthly basis (6 hospital departments in all).

If schools are penalised by Ofsted for attendance kids like mine will be off-rolled even more often than it happens now.

This is to the post above re social media. Forgot to click quote:

I think this is only part of the problem. It’s a piece of the puzzle.
It ignores the fact that school in its current iteration is unfit for purpose, outdated, highly pressured, underfunded, prison-like and I’d go as far to say toxic. See full thread for people’s examples of this.

But I don’t disagree that SM adds to the problems.

Medical appointments are coded differently to illness so presumably aren’t included in the sickness absence figures.

“90% attendance is a day off per fortnight. 80% is a day off per week.

That really is quite a lot.”

Yes, but you do agree that for an ill child from a middle class background it is less of an issue than a child on FSM?

https://www.gov.wales/absenteeism-secondary-schools-september-2022-august-2023-revised-html#:~:text=Description%20of%20Figure%205%3A%20A,the%20percentage%20is%20now%2016.3%25.

Or let’s take the Welsh figures.
“Persistent absence is defined as being absent for 20% of the most common number of required sessions. So, if most pupils are required to be in school for 300 half-day session in the year, the threshold for persistent absence is 60 sessions. These sessions need not be continuous for a pupil to be considered persistently absent.”

“Description of Figure 5: A line graph showing percentage of persistently absent secondary school age pupils stayed between 4.1% and 5.0% (r) between 2013/14 and 2018/19. Following the coronavirus pandemic, persistent absence has tripled between 2018/19 and 2022/23 and the percentage is now 16.3%.”

That to me is seriously worrying. That is a Labour Government. Their adult sickness rates post pandemic are also far higher than ours. This seems to suggest that we need to look at it at the poverty level. 1) severely absent children of whatever household need help 2) poor children need help.
Whether middle class kids are taking holidays or a few extra sniffle days is not relevant. And Ofsted needs to distinguish the two in their campaign?

My DD’s hospital appointments are down as ‘authorised absence’ and counted by half days in the yearly print out we are given. Illness is recorded in exactly the same manner.

Perhaps the info used centrally is different to that given to parents?

One year (pre Covid) my DD had 20% attendance, due to outpatient treatment.

Thankfully her school were OK about it, unlike some other schools in the region who are keen on off-rolling seriously ill children (according to friends met via the kiddy cancer ward).
The previous academic year my DD was mostly recorded as ‘educated elsewhere’ (in patient, a couple of short sessions a week with the hospital school service) which is apparently much better for the school’s figures than ‘authorised absence’?

There was some sort of hoo-ha over how DD’s attendance (lack of) was recorded during Covid because she was on the Extremely Clinically Vulnerable list so even when she was well and the school was open she wasn’t allowed to attend (school
insurance, apparently!)

Medical appointments are coded differently to illness so presumably aren’t included in the sickness absence figures.

It’s still absence though, if we’re concerned about children’s attendance and impact on education as opposed to merely ticking a performance box for Ofsted, it matters.

My DD has a weekly CAHMS appointment which means she misses an afternoon of school every week, and has other medical appointments on top of that. It impacts her education. There’s nothing put in place for her to account for that missed learning which is beyond her control.

If the concern was about gaps in education caused by absence, there would be something in place to support that. As it is she has private tuition to help fill the gap. You can’t say absence to go on holiday disadvantages children but the same amount of absence due to health concerns doesn’t. Which tells me this isn’t about concerns for children so much as schools ticking a box.

Well said - get off your arses and be parents...

A medical absence is authorised and recorded differently than illness, but both are included in persistant absence figures which are authorised and unsuthorised absences together. Persistant sbsence should be at a school level measure but somehow end up individual too.

It's batshit

as a child my tonsils meant I was off every few weeks at times. I couldn't speak or swallow. Mother wrote a note end of.

When I had my children you told school why they were off wrote a note on their return.

No-one wanted anything to spread throughout the school.

Sweden managed it.

There are huge long term implications on health of closing schools.

Illness is coded I and medical appointments are coded M so the school would be able to distinguish between them.

Yes the school can. But the persistant absence figure the government is looking at includes both.

The PP was concerned about Ofsted.

Well that's a problem for the unions maybe

You can’t say absence to go on holiday disadvantages children but the same amount of absence due to health concerns doesn’t.

One of those absences would be considered avoidable? It’s not that one disadvantages more than the other.

Covid is still around.

Im not sure if it caught up yet but illness like CP would have gone round more post covid.
inset days are different at all local schools. So i can see parents keeping primart sibs off when secondary are off to go places including abroad.luding
out of the 5 or 6 days 0 are the same day. I lik e that places maybe less busy but lots will have kids at 2 schools.
Parents wfh are going to be more likely to keep a borderline child off.

I suspect the Swedes are healthier and more out-doorsy than us. They were in a better position to deal with covid. Keeping schools open over here in spring 20 and Jan 21 would have been a catastrophe for teachers and parents. No teachers for them to go back to after a while I expect....

Exactly. I don't know any ASN/SEND child's parents that want them out of school. Most parents want their child to be safe, happy and settled within a decent learning environment so that they can thrive. Putting more pressure on these parents does not help them in the slightest and can make a difficult situation even worse, to the point that some parents mental health has hit the floor.