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

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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 it’s a mixture of things. But one thing that’s relatively new is the spotlight on mental health and anxiety combined with the influence of social media.
Children are being by told that feeling anxious is a bad thing. That they need to see a therapist, that they may be neurodivergent. That when they are managing in school but not at home they must be masking. That lockdown caused all of this negative behaviour.
Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress as a result of cortisol flooding the body. It’s temporary and it passes. Children are very savvy; if their parent tells them they’re ’suffering from anxiety’ and keeps them off school they’ll soon click that they can escape the classroom by saying their anxiety is stopping them.
In reality, very few children actually have debilitating anxiety. Most are resilient, or can develop resilience if supported. I can guarantee that a fair few number of children who refuse to attend school would soon change their minds if their parent turned off the TV, WiFi and internet at home!
We now have the perfect storm of an explosion of children whose parent wants an instant referral to CAMHS because their child has the odd meltdown at home combined with a massively overstretched mental health service.
The result? Children who ARE actually really mentally unwell can’t access the services they desperately need. We are producing a generation of future adults who will have unrealistic expectations of how to be a productive, independent adult.

I think WFH contributes massively. When I was teaching DD went in rain or shine unless she'd actually got something like D&V, it was too hard to get time off as a teacher, so I'd dose her with Calpol and send her in and fingers crossed I wouldn't get the phone call and have to plan a cover lesson on the fly.

Now I WFH, if DD is ill she can stay home and recuperate as she should have done before so her attendance has decrease, however her grades have not.

Screen time

COVID

Parents not seeing the value of education

Wfh is a good point

@rainydaysandwednesdays I see the point you are making and if I hadn’t had children I may have thought similar.
I don’t think we are making our children weaker, I think there are pressures there that weren’t previously and they realistically can’t cope. Going to school everyday isn’t a struggle for most kids (obviously there will be a few exceptions). Going to school with unnecessary pressure, stress and an unmanageable environment will make it a struggle.
I have no idea what the solution is but it seems the school system just no longer works.

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.

This simply bears no relation to my current experience of primary school. My DD aged 8 does art, topic work, PE twice a week, outdoor lessons (e.g. recreating the Battle of Watling Street in the playground last week!) and plenty of extracurricular clubs. She is learning piano through school from this term and also does coding club among other things. My experience may be wildly unusual but I suspect it isn’t.

Our school was closed for 3 days in a row last term due to strikes (Scotland) with barely any notice.

Parents and kids think that school is optional, because clearly 3 days make no difference to the school, so why should it to the children!

Presumably better funding and support is needed to make schools a better place to learn and work and make the experience better for everyone involved.

I would say because primary school these days is very difficult-most definitely not fun! We have a strict timetable, SPAG, reading comprehension lesson, writing lesson, arithmetic and maths all before lunchtime.

The work is harder now then it ever used to be, so many targets to hit for children and staff. Not enough staff to help those who struggle so they end up sitting there confused which sparks behavioural issues. The list is endless...

Home education will be the way forward, there's absolutely no reason why a young teen can't educate themself. Keeping them in school at this age is spoon feeding them. Allow them the responsibility of taking their education into their own hands.
WFH has become the new normal now, and soon Home education will be too. It will teach relevant life skills such as time management and self discipline. The technology is all in place as are the resources.
We are still using the traditional Victorian teaching methods and wondering why it's not working ? It's akin to sending a horse and cart down the motorway.

To those who think schools are stricter now what and when is your comparison? I know my dad was caned, pushed and dangled out of a window at his catholic school in the sixties and seventies. He also had his left hand tied to his chair so he couldn't write with it as of course that was a sign of the devil.
The school I went to didn't physically punish but it was strict, the uniform rules similar to now, morning runs given as punishment alongside internal exclusion in a block we nicknamed the chokey and the usual detentions. Rules about skirt and tie length , which side of the corridor you walked on etc, teachers who would scream in your face and others who belittled children made jibes about weight and poverty. Bog standard east London comp in the nineties.

It’s interesting that people are saying it’s Covid related. The schools re-opened nearly 3 years ago (8th March 2021) and haven’t closed since, but so damaging were the closures during lockdown that the effects are still being felt today. Very sad.

a young girl having a spate of UTI’s and anxiety/school refusal is ringing alarm bells for me…

They did, but the bubble system in England carried on until July and isolation laws for DC didn't end until well into the next academic year. So it was getting on for two years where school was something that could be withdrawn or potentially opted out of at short notice due to covid. I agree lockdown was the main part of it, but there's also the 'tail' if that makes sense.

I think that the education system needs to be completely reviewed. Stop lumping kids together when they have totally different and competing needs. Let the studious, serious ones access a home education system so that they can learn in peace. The SEN ones access proper SEN education in their SEN schools and the non academic, often unruly, ones access skills based schools where they can be taught pro social behaviour, numeracy and basic literacy and practical skills to take them onto apprenticeships at age 14. Just sit maths and English exams perhaps. If they want to top up their academic learning, they can do that from home. Staff these places with ex Army/police/security personnel who know how to crowd control and deal with problematic behaviour. Teach them behavioural alternatives to spitting, swearing, throwing chairs and punching pregnant teachers.

Anyone who falls into two categories can try different systems out to find the best fit for them so they're given opportunities to change and follow the path most appropriate for them.

Improve access to adult educational opportunities so adults can always go and make up their learning if they feel they missed out.

I was reading the other day about a state in the US that gives tokens to parents to help them access private online education and set up their own small community based learning groups with other like minded parents. So many kids in the US can't attend schools now due to disruptive behaviour, gangs, drugs, weapons etc. Seems like we're going the same way in many places. You can't expect regular students to cope in dangerous environments like that.

Would take money though 🤷🏻‍♀️

school is a horrible environment for a lot of kids/teenagers. teachers being bullies and encouraging peer bullying toward minors is probably number one on my list of why my attendance was low.

For us it’s just constant illness. High fevers , d and v etc . Constantly

Totally hangover from the Covid years. In our area of Scotland the "online learning" was non-existent and the provision for children was utterly pitiful. Nothing at all from March 2020 until they went back in August 2020, the second Dec 2020-March 2021 lockdown they had slightly more but nothing like a full time or even part time education.

So it went from "school is really really important, you must attend all the time, do your homework, prepare for exams" to "meh, few worksheets, look at Bitesize and we'll see you in 4 months".

Covid. Social contract between schools and parents has broken down. In addition kids think school is optional.

I haven't read all of the posts on this thread because I'm about to go out but can get the gist from the replies on the first 2 pages.

What I find has changed immensely is attitudes towards this post covid.

My eldest had the issues described by OP, albeit at an earlier age, before lockdowns.

I put a post up then about school refusal (due to undiagnosed SEN) and basically got my arse handed to me by a lot of unsympathetic posts that either mirrored the first reply on this thread or told me that having a child at home due to their mental health was, effectively, a luxury belief. Times have moved on since then which is a good thing for school refusers and, in the case of my son, it was definitely a leveller.

I don't think schools are fit for purpose. My DS didn't attend in any effective way from years 5 - 11 because he either was running home or eventually we took the decision to give up for high school. He self taught GCSEs at home and got good enough grades in 6 subjects which was the minimum entry requirement, that, with improved mental health, he's been able to attend 6th form for subjects he loves which has been a great success.

Despite no formal schooling between years 5-11 (and very little educational engagement until the last few months before GCSEs) he applied to and was shortlisted for interview by Oxford and he did very well in their admissions test. He didn't get selected but has been offered a place at an extremely prestigious London university if he gets the grades. So it does beg the question, along with lots of others, of why bums on seats in schools is really necessary?

Obviously not all kids out of school have the outcome my DS has had but this idea that children must be in school to achieve is simply untrue.

I don't have much knowledge about the 'history of education' but was formal schooling partly to enable working age adults to work? If so the world has changed since then for that reason, but also, in terms of technology.

Like the NHS this needs someone to sit down for a fundamental rethink.

Based on my own experience, I don’t think schools have the resources they need to address and resolve the issues that affect some children’s attendance and that impacts other children’s attendance over time.

My nephew has struggled with his behaviour since he started school (suspected ADHD). He was moved on from one school with nowhere else to go and another gradually reduced his time in by 50% with no work set. No one seems to care - there’s been no referrals for assessment or outreach from anyone. He probably missed 18+ months of primary, not counting COVID.

Now he’s at secondary and still struggling so in trouble a lot. It’s rubbish for him because he’s not developed the coping strategies needed to thrive in education and learn, rubbish for the other kids who are disrupted and impacted by his behaviour, and rubbish for the teachers who probably have enough stress without that on top and want the kids they teach to do well.

I’ve heard similar stories from friends too - kids with challenging behaviour being left at home and out of education for long periods because the school can’t manage them. I went to a rough secondary school with poor outcomes and a lot of teen pregnancies. Suspension was short term and only if you did something really bad (drugs in school, violence, etc), most problems were dealt with in school.

Challenging kids won’t magically learn how to behave in a classroom without help, they just become bigger and create bigger disruptions and further attendance problems.

Me too. And the whole argument that “well, you can do it all online, so what’s the point”. It’s COMPLETELY different from wfh. That’s a solution for adults who have their life and their community structures in place, it’s not a substitute for developing those structures or even experiencing them in the first place. School should be about so much more than just the content of the lessons. We shouldn’t just accept that some children will never learn what it is to be a part of a real, physical community, that’s so depressing.

Schools are so underfunded staff wise that fewer clubs, very short breaks, hard run like boot camps etc SEN children being failed badly so are left floundering in mainstream which is no good for anyone. Causes disruption on top of kids that don't care. Schools then try get stricter. Esp high schools
Luckily our school is not stupidly strict and is better than most. My kids enjoy it mainly

I don't have much knowledge about the 'history of education' but was formal schooling partly to enable working age adults to work? If so the world has changed since then for that reason, but also, in terms of technology.

No. Conversely, it was introduced largely to
prevent children from being forced into work themselves.

This was my dd.

She was diagnosed at 16 and in severe burnout 2 months later.