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.

Well she only left primary in July 2023 so I have to disagree with that

Covid led to an increase in anxiety and mental health problems.

It changed the mindset from school being somewhere the majority bought into, to being thought of as an option. Lack of direction and clarity from the government meant that there were no clear systems in place.

Social media increases all the time and is a force for evil as well as (some) good. Bullying and unpleasantness increase consequently.

Schools are required to manage ever increasing workloads and enjoyment has left the profession.

Behaviour is ever more challenging, both in school and out of it. It isn’t all poor parenting, but much of it is parenting that is lacking in structure and boundaries.

Schools are scared of what might happen to them when they can’t meet the regularly increasing targets for just about everything.

Buildings are failing, crowded and many are unsafe.

There’s no money to provide for the range of need that’s in schools at present. Books and equipment are shabby and are often not cared for.

I admit i have had no experience of school since I was there myself in the 80s and 90s. But some of the things people mention as why it's so bad now was the same at my school 25+ years ago. Some of them are not new things surely?
Can't go to the toilet during lessons. We had that. (Avoided them during breaks due to the kids smoking)
Strict uniform (teachers with ruler to measure heels etc) and only certain hair styles allowed/ no make up etc. Only allowed to wear certain colour socks and even hair bands! We had that.
Focus on "proper" lessons rather than the arts. We only had 1 art lesson, 1 music lesson and 1 drama lesson a week. (Unless you took it as an option after year 9 in which case you had more). PE was also only an hour a week.
We had a 45 min lunch break and one 15 minute break in the morning. Was in school 8.45-3.30 (4pm on a Monday to squeeze in an extra tech lesson from year 9 onwards).
Behaviour is one thing that was different from what I hear. Yes we had a few low level disruptors in quite a few lessons. But if they kept at it they were sent out and didn't come back until the next lesson. We certainly didn't have people screaming, running out, throwing chairs and swearing etc.
I hated the social side of school however and would have preferred to just to normal lessons all day if it was up to me. Hated drama, art, music, PE and break times. I thrived when being taught the "old fashioned" way in silence at my desk. But I do understand this doesn't work for lots of others.
So I'm not sure how you can make school better for everyone. By changing the curriculum and making school more "interactive and fun" would make it hell for kids like me. I hated it enough as it was but if I was made to dance around or talk a lot or work in groups doing role play (or pretty much anything that involved other people and people looking at me! ) I would have started to refuse school.
(I was diagnosed autistic as an adult which explains a lot)

Attendance figures are kept more accurately than they used to be. Covid made school seem optional and not so important. Parents working from home means staying at home seems more possible. Internet, gaming, social media and ability to binge watch favourite series makes staying at home more entertaining than it used to be.

There has always been lots of children who didn’t really like school. Schools are less chilled out and it is harder to go under the radar.,When I was at school there was not much pressure to achieve. When my mother was at school you could drop subjects like maths very early if you didn’t like them. Two of my grandparents left school at 14yrs and one of them didn’t go that much before then as he preferred to work in his Dad’s shop.

"Gosh to go back to the 70s where teachers were more approachable.. they got you through your O levels without the school being run like the army and feel like your in jail."

Hmm, I was in a state school in the 1970s and we had similar rules, it was very strict.
And they taught us how to use you're. 😉
Fewer children went to university so there probably was less pressure, top A'level grades weren't essential.

Today's problems seem to be a combination of parenting (there seems to be less boundary-setting), pervasive and damaging social media and mental health problems.

I would say that it is very much down to teaching in my dcs lessons and how much constructive individual feedback they get in their lessons, how the teacher engages with the class etc, if they don't feel like the teacher cares about the subject, or how well the DC do/don't do (maybe because their time is spent doing other things rather than teaching/generating interest in the subject) then they have little interest and switch off, so what is the value of them attending the lesson? I do think that there is too much expected to be learnt too soon, which comes at the expense of generating a genuine interest in the subject and rapport with the class/teacher.

When I was at school the classes were relatively calm and peaceful. Now they're just manic teachers are meant to involve the kids in their learning and do practical work, getting them moving about. It's transitions all day, moving from one activity to another.

I remember when the national curriculum caused strikes in the 80s, and when Ofsted introduced their guideline that each activity should only last 20 minutes. Awful, and totally the opposite of what a lot of autistic kids can take.

I did well at school, but I'd fail now if I made it in at all.

I agree, and then they look at their parents with degrees, earning no more than those without.

For me personally, attendance is for the school’s tick boxes and the talk of “learning time” being so important at school doesn’t translate for my dd. Her attendance is around 95% though so not terrible.

She gets absolutely nothing (or at most about a paragraph of writing) done in school because she can’t concentrate on demand for 50 minutes. All her home time is spent recovering from “being around people” and actually doing the work she was supposed to do.

A day off for her is ten times more productive - on an inset day she’ll sit at her desk all day with her music and snacks and get loads achieved.

I don’t allow her off school unless she’s actually unwell because it’s a slippery slope - she needs the grit for when she has to turn up to a job every day in the future.

But I do wish school could be completely reformed. The importance of bums on seats with the correct uniform is seeming more and more outdated since even people in offices are dressing more casually and working a few days from home.

I hear you @AddictedtoCrunchies - my youngest DD is in Yr 11 and the rules have become ridiculous. Get sent to the reset room if you have black socks over your tights because it's -1 degrees when you're waiting for the bus at 7.45. Got detention for using a toilet in the wrong building because you had a meeting (about volunteering for the prom committee) at lunchtime and were in that building.

Having a 20 minute lunch break at 1.30 when you left home at 7.30.

My DD has always wanted to go to school but all this crap on top of GCSE'S is testing even the most conscientious student.

She has decided not to stay at school for 6th form and they wonder why? They keep saying 6th form is more relaxed blah blah blah, too late I'm afraid- her view of school is rock bottom and she can't wait to leave.

Yeah, we've interfered with too many things that underpinned our system. Even pre-pandemic, the relationship between work and being able to afford to live was being damaged, and we've allowed a society to develop with vast generational disparities in the opportunity to acquire assests and security. So we were already on a problem trajectory pre-covid. Then the contract between parents and the state with regards to schooling was broken, and evidently that's not a switch that can just be flicked back on. So here we are.

Not wanting to provoke controversy here but just an observation about how much things have changed in terms of the traditional school model. For some children, it simply doesn't work anymore. Children with SEN or who are unwell. Children who have been so horrifically bullied that they are unable to return. For some of those children, online learning might be a better answer. I think there should be room to explore different options when it comes to education and what one child thrives on, another child might find absolutely horrific. I know that during my educational years I was horribly bullied and the school were utterly useless and did nothing and didn't care. For me if online learning had been an option I would have been able to cope much better.

Ours has all that in a City. It’s a fabulous school. Art, music, trips, outdoor learning both as forest school and on school grounds, school chickens, projects, baking…

@Sowingbees Yes good point!

My DS is graduating to offers paying him not much more than I earned 20 years ago as a trainee shop manager 😫

It’s the Ofsted and league-table culture of the Conservative 90s, mixed with the prescriptive teaching culture of New Labour, finished off with the narrow Govian traditionalist curriculum of the 2010s. It did for the teachers first and now the mental health of the nation’s children is collapsing.

My brother just took his two out for 3 weeks in Aus during term time. No thought to how they are going to catch up.

When my DD went back into highschool after covid, the teachers were horrible! No smiley welcomes, just angry and stressed. I actually angrily complained about it as she was coming home crying.

We need to change the education system completely. I believe this was always coming but covid fast tracked it.

On a purely practical level, now that so many posters WFH, it's no hassle for kids to stay off school. We got sent in unless really poorly (and my own kids got sent in) because working in an office or similar meant having to take time off to look after them.
Now kids can have a sniffle or just say they don't feel well, and there's no need to drill into it because you're home anyway. It's just "okay, but be quiet/play on your screens because I'll be working and taking calls"

And young people have the means to talk about this on tiktok.
Search "academic validation" it's an eye opener.

School just feels like an experiment that isn’t working any more. If you want to learn, you can get more done at home. If you don’t want to learn, why bother going? The teachers are broken, the behaviour is ridiculous, the rules are petty and mean-minded. The day is long, the breaks are short. The schools are bigger and further apart so kids travel miles to get there and be lost in a tsunami of chaos. The curriculum is overstuffed with irrelevant nonsense. Extending the years you must remain in education does not add value - it merely wastes the time of those that don’t want to be there AND those that do.

Reading these posts make me sad.

Treating school as optional isn't a good thing, it's basically teaching them that they don't have to do anything they don't want to do. That's not life and you're setting them up for a massive fall. All you're doing is pushing your problems into the future.

We are going to end up with a lot of messed up kids with no grit, staying power or enthusiasm - leading causes being social media and the messages being fed re mental health/gender nonsense and soft parents with too much compassion.

In fact, I despair so much sometimes that we are making ourselves so weak as humans that we will start to become extinct!

My daughter started getting anxious about school in year 5/6. She's was very quite and studious, loved school and teachers when she was very small but started getting tummy troubles in the later years of primary. It turned out she couldn't cope with the disruptive pupils, she wanted to get on and learn but hated the noise and behaviour of other pupils. I could see she felt lost and because she was well behaved and average academically no one gave her any attention.

It’s our value system and I agree with those that have said that covid has almost broken what we know as school.

Also parenting has changed so much. Once upon a time everyone sent their children to school and it was something you did. Everyone was in pretty much everyday and there wasn’t a huge penalty on being off for a doctors appointment. I remember my school having the resources to separate us based in academic need and those that needed it had 122 attention. There were a few children that had chronic illness and they were not i. For obvious reasons.

Now there is so much pressure on attendance and teachers don’t seem to consider individual circumstances but I think as a people, as a community we do no value school in the same way. A majority of parents know that school needs a complete reform and thst mindset is playing into how much we respect and value school.

My DD goes in very day pretty much. She knows she has to because I told her so. If she is sick I make sure she takes the time off and I hate how schools call you constantly whilst a child is recovering as if we are braking the rules. If she doesn’t want to go to school because of friendship, I will go to the school and her primary were great at sorting things out (eventually!).

School is broken - parents know it. There is so much more going on too.

The good thing about the attendance issue this is that it is now making parents look at the education system and how it is crumbling. This has been going on for years but many parents haven't been explicitly aware of it, the blame has just been laid at the doors of teachers. Now proper conversations are now taking place and hopefully these will start to move up the food chain, although I'm not overly optimistic.