If you work in education, what do you think is causing the current attendance issues?

[NeedAnUpgrade]

I’ve read quite a lot on this recently. DD1 is 10, she’s always been reluctant to go to school. She had a spate of UTIs, stomach aches, headaches etc. She’s had a bit of time off sick but we only triggered the attendance letter recently as it went below a certain threshold. DH and I have always done our best to get her into school, being reassured that she’s ‘been fine all day’ by her teachers. It all came to a head this year (yr 5) after a complete meltdown, several anxiety attacks and refusal to leave the house. She’s now on a reduced timetable at school and on the waiting list for an ASD assessment.
Academically she’s ahead but just can’t seem to cope with the school environment.

I’m just wondering what those who work in education think the issues are. Am I just a terrible parent? Although I’m not sure what else I could do. I suspect a complete lack of funding in education has had the biggest impact on schools and students. Especially those with SEN.

I think this sort of response is the sort of thing the OP is worried about.

We are at the end of yr11 ---and my tether- and are limping through. Attendance is 97% because I'm strict but this week's email home from school..? Too many wearing white socks for PE and not black.

I mean. Really? With everything they're doing revision and study, the most important thing is the socks. Drives me nuts. Too much focus on the stuff that's not relevant.

Can't wait for last exam day when he can walk out and never look back and I went to the same school 1982-7 so do have an affinity.

I'm lucky we've got this far with no health issues and feels sorry for those dealing with that on top of the rest of the barriers.

For us it's no mental health support for our teenager or SEN support for our son.
DD attendance is improving now she is classed as a young carer. She's now getting counselling for the anxiety which she has been suffering from for years (due to brothers illness and bullying).
DS is currently going through a duel assessment with CAMHS for ASD/ADHD but we shall not hold our breath for support from school. Early Help have been supportive as have local charities, school only care about his attendance in school. 🤔

Attendance in schools is slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels.

Attendance Autumn Term 2022/23 was 93.4%
Attendance Autumn Term 2023/24 was 94.4%

Prior to the pandemic Attendance was at 95.2%

All of that data is for Primary Schools.

What has changed is the proportion of children missing 10% or more of sessions is still quite a way from pre-pandemic levels.

Some of that is to do with a culture shift that the pandemic opened peoples eyes too. Years and years of "school is very important" to during the pandemic "it's not that important, keep them off".

Some of that attitude prevails, which is understandable.

Another pandemic factor is the explosion of work from home, it's easier to keep a child off, if you are in the house to supervise. Rightly or wrongly. That happens.

School is mostly a horrible, oppressive environment with a rigid curriculum and in secondary, just tests and pressure and ridiculous rules. Imagine working for a boss like that and knowing you can't leave for 5 years.

@Sammysquiz she’s never really been able to articulate it, although she is getting better at finding the words. She’s terrified of getting into trouble, she doesn’t like any attention on her at all to the point where she’ll knowingly answer a question wrong if everyone else has got it wrong. She also struggles to speak to teachers so can’t say if there’s a problem when she’s at school.

But at school you can hang about with your friends.
At home with DPs? Who wants to do that?

Those who don't have many/ any friends at school...?

@BaconMassive those stats are interesting. Not nearly as awful as it’s made out to be on the news - but then I guess it never is.

Older teen DDs here. Our school didn't actively ( like online lessons) teach my kids for over a year during covid. The kids realised they can teach themselves with study guides and youtube better at home and have no disruptive kids to deal with. School effectively totally devalued itself.

They are not going to get this back from this cohort - we are counting down they days till they are out. Which is pretty sad as I was a head girl. My dds have had no school trips, discos or anything really to build back a community or trust and value.

This with bells on.

What child wants to attend a place that punishes them for pointless reasons. Gives them next to no autonomy and is quite frankly in many cases, rude and unkind? From what I see of schools, it's their behaviour and attitude to children and young people that needs to change, not the parents!

As mentioned above the link between education and a 'good job is broken'

It's even worse than they said

After you have worked hard at school (struggling all the while socially, emotionally and sometimes physically) and got great grades you go to your chosen university and get your degree.

40k debt - hardly, it's more like 70k and remember that is rising at 6.25% from the day you start uni - so by the end of 1 years (9,250+9,978 + 6.25=20,429)
Year 2 (42,136) , year 3 (65,199) - and that's the maximum maintenance loan outside London - higher inside

You then take your degree and try and get a job- civil service - ha! - they're on recruitment freeze

All the jobs require internships that you can't get unless you know someone or can afford to work for free.

Oh and recruitment it 'institution blinded' so University of Bedford = Oxford/Cambridge.

If you do get that job, good luck trying to find housing/transport with your salary (unless Mummy/Daddy/Granny & Pops can help you out) and get used to working lots of extra hours as 'you're lucky we took you on you know'

It's not worth it - you may as well leave at 16, get a minimum wage job and once you're old enough get topped up by UC/housing benefit.

I think there are a huge number of parents struggling with a broad range of worries that the Pandemic exacerbated. Things like cost of living, insecure jobs, extortionate childcare, unreliable and poor public transport and healthcare provision etc etc. The children pick up on this sense of constantly living on edge and their own anxieties grow from that. Where schools potentially see the sharp end of this is their lack of ability to mitigate and they end up making it worse. So you have anxious children struggling with stressed teachers, heavy performance expectations, large class sizes with other children who are acting up or need additional support (and aren't getting it) and then substandard resources and facilities as a cherry on the top.

The whole thing is a deck of cards but I think you can trace most of it back to a lack of investment in policies that benefit the younger generations.

I would love to know what the attendance figures were 20 - 30 years ago.
Or even back in the 1970s

I wonder if they would be anywhere near 93%?

I suspect not.

Alongside the mental health of our teens, we are also fostering this atmosphere that only academics count, that 50% should go to university and that is the only real thing.
When we start taking things like apprenticeships seriously, and valuing other skills than exams, when we start having GCSE courses that fit jobs instead of a pre run for A levels then we will re-engage a whole raft of kids who are currently written off.

We used to have a culture of going into work and school no matter what - even if you were pretty poorly and with few exceptions. We are now in the middle of a shift, where people are starting to realise it is not good for anyone to power through illnesses. It takes longer to get better, it increases the chances of others getting ill and it just feels rotten.

Yes there are vulnerable families who need support to keep their children in school but on the whole, children (and adults) shouldn't be told to crack on when they are feeling genuinely poorly. What we need now, is a more supportive system which works with this shift, rather than against it. The pandemic has changed behaviours - we need fundamental change when it comes to both the welfare and school system.

I don't understand why the government seems to want to double down rather than understanding how to move forward in a different way. The school I teach at is now scrapping the 48 hour rule for sickness and encouraging people to come in as soon as they feel better. This is down to the pressure from the DfE - just one of the example of swimming against a tide rather than with it.

Primary?

Honestly, it's boring. It's stifling. There is no fun anymore. Would you want to sit in a maths lesson for AN HOUR when you're 9? We didn't have hour long lessons until high school.

No art, no fun, no topic work, little PE - it's all work work work - worksheets galore, lots and lots of writing.

Not designed with little brains in mind in the slightest.

High school - again, boring. Teachers don't care. Teachers don't know your child's name because there's 2000 other kids in the school. You've forgotten your pencil because you have ADHD? Tough. Detention.

There is literally NO FUN in school anymore. At all.

I am reiterating what others have said, the education is purely about the 'career' being the end result, whatever happened to learning for learning's sake! This ties in to lack of opportunities in Music, Drama, Art. That said at my DD's school there are after school choir, orchestra but when you go along to the clubs, nothing is explained to you, it is not inclusive or an encouraging ethos in any way, just the same old combative attitude exhibited by the teachers in the day! There are so many rules that are pointless and unkind that the culture of schools is one of hostility. The following in my mind are pointless:

• coats off in the school, even in the corridor when you have just come in from being banished to the outside.
• loo coverage, massive fuss over this so much time and consideration given to ensuring loos are not used in different parts of the buildings, are not used by different years etc. Again an unnecessary combative approach taken by teachers. In my school in the 90s you could use the loos and nobody was standing outside of them. You couldn't go in lessons but again not a massive rule about it at the teacher's discretion. People smoked but it was on the edges of the field.

• no place to sit and eat inside, unless you want to sit on the hall floor, this is confusing to me as my school was huge in London suburbs in the 90s and you were free to sit in the canteen or not.

• constant surveillance data i.e that includes the results you have achieved, the rewards you have gained, the behaviour that is poor, the food you have eaten, how is any of this helpful to secondary aged children. With this you are infantalising older teens. Schools need to accept that teenage behaviour is naturally curious, is testing of boundaries, otherwise you re setting up for failing all the time and that is having a hugely negative impact on their mental health, agency and ultimately maturity.

Some really good points here. For my DD it’s SEN related- we have ended up home schooling. I don’t know anyone that is happy for their child to be off school. Surely it’s harder work for your child to be at home all the time? The only people I know who are home schooling were forced in to it due to school not being a suitable environment for their DC.

@brightyellowflower not sure which primary school you mean but DD loved hers. Lots of outdoor learning and activities, art, music lessons etc. Little village state primary. Teachers wonderful and a fantastic family atmosphere. Couldn't has asked for a better experience for her.

To add, the surveillance culture results in loads more teenagers been labelled as bad, which is demoralising and over simplistic.

@Whatsthestorynow I really don’t want to end up homeschooling. I can see this happening though.
I really value a decent education, from some of the posts here it feels like more value is put on a strict narrow outcome than actual learning and it gets worse in secondary.

School attendance is worse at secondary because older children can stay at home without needing parents there.

As I said on the thread last week, when it comes to teachers, it’s widely accepted that schools are stressful, under-resourced, over-scrutinised and riddled with poor behaviour. Teachers are quitting and not being replaced as people do not want to be teachers.

And yet these same places are supposed to be where children happily skip to every day? Children are voting with their feet.

If your DD is waiting for ASD assessment then I can imagine that your average primary school could be a very unpleasant environment for her.

For me, school became optional over covid.

Had 2 DC in school at the time - one in year 9 & one one year 10. They were sent home on the 20th March 2020 and then didnt do a single thing school wise at all until September 2020. No work sent home, no lessons online etc.

Their school was fantastically shit (and this is a good school in good area with generally involved and engaged parents).

The school year 2020 - 2021 wasnt much better when they went back in year 11 and year 10 - constantly getting sent home, or years groups shut due to covid and teachers not available to teach. The oldest 1 was in year 11 and had missed half of year 10 with no work for over 6 months. Very hard to engage them to study when in their words 'school didnt think it was that important from March - September so why would they think it is now?' I had to sort of agree.

They didnt see the point anymore and to be honest, neither did I. If the school didnt bother with them for 6 months then the feeling was why should they be that bothered?

Prior to this we never took them out for a holiday, day trip etc. I just wouldnt do it as I felt school was so important.

After covid, I changed my mind and so when they were at 6th form (at the same school they attended), we did do family holidays in term time and I felt absolutely no guilt whatsoever. Lesson plans, worksheets etc are now on google classrooms so they can catch up if they want.

I dont blame the teachers, but I would say for a large proprotion of students and families, the 'contract' between school and home has significantly changed and a lot of people dont think its necessary to be in school every day when the were able to miss so much and no one cared then.

This may change for younger children who didnt experience this, but for a large chunk of kids who were negatively impacted over lack of schooling over covid this is their way of thinking.

Schools have also changed for the worst. Large secondary schools so many kids lost within the system, poor behaviour at all levels, either no discpline or over the top discipline, teachers only care about exam results, no aspirational teaching anymore etc.

I know at the school DC attended (through family members who still attend now), there isnt an issue with long term absences as much as frequent short term absences (a day or two all the way up to 2 weeks for a holiday). They are fighting a losing battle as school is no longer a place they feel safe and are inspired to be at. If kids feel ill then more parents wfh so its easier to just keep them at home than before as there are no childcare issues etc.

I dont know how to fix it all, but something needs to drastically change and that probably starts with funding schools properly, ensuring those with SEN are only in mainstream if they can truly cope and benefit form it etc etc.

Even those type of primaries are not like that now.

Just to add a bit to what I wrote earlier about my DS, who is in primary, our experience has not been the same in secondary.

My DS, in Year 9 loves his secondary school, and yes, has fun there. He does choir, band, climbing, D of E, debating, lots of concerts and after school activities. There is still a lot of very poor behaviour, but luckily this is getting less bad as he moves through the school as more classes are taught in sets by ability.