Talk me through this - school absence due to bereavement

[pastypirate]

Before I respond to the school.
My dm died in November very suddenly with no warning - heart failure but she was seen by gp 12 hours earlier and assessed as not at risk.
Anyway I'm an only and my dds (11/14) are her only grandchildren. They were very close and saw their gm at least weekly and she had cared for them regularly all their lives. They saw her more than their father and she was a more consistent adult (dps own words)
I will get to the point.
I kept the dds off school for 4 days fully age dm died. Dd1 elected to go back full time of her own accord. Dd2 went back on a reduced timetable for a week and then back to normal. Dd2's primary school have been incredible and I really can't fault them - kind and sensitive and flexible. I took in a thank you gift and wrote to the head as it was such a great example of trauma informed practice. No dramas there but a yardstick of how things can be done.

Dd1 school no such understanding. Her attendance has never been a concern and year 7 was 100%. Year 8 she had 2 weeks off when she had Covid. They sent me a grumpy letter - I phoned and complained and the attendance person very apologetic.
Year 9 no other absences except the bereavement.

I took dd1 to the funeral which was held over 2 days so her total absence has been 6 days in a 4 day and 2 day block. . This was all in November. School fully aware of reason. They phoned me during the first block and were quite confrontational. The one thing which irked me was 'the longer you keep her home the harder it will be for her to come back'. She went back the next day of her own accord anyway.

The attendance policy states they will support pupils to catch up after longer absences. To best of my knowledge this wasn't done for dd1. No support offered at all.

I've just had another shitty email from school. There have been no absences since November. I was confused at first in case dd1 was being late or mitching lessons but I've checked her register in the parent app - it's only the bereavement leave. It's not the generic letter I've received in the past.

Dd1 is a very high achieving pupil and has consistently high attainment. There are no concerns from the school about literally anything - parents evening was only the other day. Only including this as I would understand a bit if she was wobbling academically etc.

I am really cross about this though I know it's somewhat coloured by my own grief.

Part of me thinks it won't change anything so responding is pointless anyway. The other part of me thinks I should wade in and make a formal complaint which I've never done to this school (loads over the years to the primary!)

School attendance and how it's dealt eith can be a Bix ticking joke imo . My oldest sin went from 100% attendance to 60%. The school had zero interest in why or supporting ds. I was in every other week for years with multiple members of the smt. If they had spent that effort getting him seen by camhs maybe he would have been fit for school. Turns out after he turned 18 he has sleep issues, thyroid issues and medically unfit to work ( due to mh and sleep / thyriod) but as a child camhs, the grand school all ignored us. They didn't care about him. Just there figures.

Have they sent a physical letter or emailed? Is it a generic "pupil is under 97%" type letter, or more personalised? Either way, I might return it to them adding a polite but firm note that I don't consider this letter applies to our circumstances and you'd appreciate being taken off their telling-off-letters list if I was feeling arsey that day. Replying or not won't make much difference though, so do whatever you fancy or think will make you feel better.
I'm so sorry about your mum x

I am so sorry for your loss. I cry every day for my mum. So warm hugs and support. My bosses didn't understand but I didn't care, they never knew her

It's all done on percentages on the number of days off aa a proportion of the number of days of term already elapsed.
(Eg. If DC was off on day 2 of the September term then they would be at 50% attendance, if they hadn't further absence then by day3 they would be up to 66% attendance and by day 4 of term they would be up to 75% attendance).

I'm sorry for your loss.

Ex secondary TA - had parents complain to me all the time about the letters resulting from absences, I worked with SEN kids who struggled with school. I also have a SEN DD who was absent one month more than she made it to school due to burnout.

My advice to them and you is please just ignore! You know your children the best and it's not like you took them out of school for a jolly!! The local education authorities are putting immense pressure on schools for attendance - it's a shame they're not concentrating their time and resources in fixing a broken system (SEN and mental health needs, lack of teachers and support staff!!).

We get weekly texts where if your child meets expected criteria the text is warm and encouraging. If your child is struggling the text is cold and passive aggressive, with no option to reply or explain. I don't even open the text anymore!!

Wishing you and your girls all the best. Bereavement is hard, there's no hard and fast rules so continue to be an awesome Mum and put those girls first!!

I work in education and have a child with a chronic illness.

It's not as thought through as "we don't think this child needed 6 days for their grandparent's death". It'll be an automatic email/letter because your daughter has no specific flag on their account to say that there will be a good reason for low attendance - i.e. the child has some illness or regular CAMHs sessions or something.

My daughter's attendance this year is 93%, for the last 4 weeks 82%. I have received no warning letters about attendance and no calls from ed welfare. That's because my daughter has Crohn's disease, is currently in a flare, and has had multiple hospital appointments this last few weeks. She has two more hospital visits before the end of this month scheduled. School has placed a flag on her attendance because I explained this, they see the hospital letters, they know how unwell she can be and they know she is a bloody star who will come in if she possibly can.

The fact is that your daughter has no such flag and so an automatic message is triggered. You can ignore it because it was a one-off, she doesn't have generally patchy attendance for spurious reasons. Try not to take it personally.

People deal with grief differently and what particularly irritates me about how schools are with regard to certain things is that their approach isn’t reflective of what the children will experience in the world of work at all.
Time off for bereavement would not be counted against you at work. Most companies just wouldn’t go there.

These things have to be considered in light of the circumstances. People might say a death of an aunt doesn’t warrant much time off for bereavement.
I went back to school too soon after we suddenly lost my aunt, who was only 29 and died in mysterious circumstances. We’ll never know but I think it’s possible she took her own life. She’d looked after me a lot when I was very young.
We hadn’t been sleeping much. It felt like police were at the house all the time because of the fact she’d been found dead in her home.
Taking 1 day off school - a Friday - was in hindsight insufficient. It was my choice however and I made the wrong choice.
It was the first time I’d experienced someone dying and I was 14.

One of the delightful teachers had a go at me on my first day back for being in a daze. I apologised and explained my aunt had died a few days beforehand. I didn’t even get to finish my sentence before being told, “well that was last week, you have to move on.”
For the first time that provoked me to stand my ground and argue with an adult.
I said something like, “you truly are a horrible person, do you know that?” She got quite irate at me and raised her voice, so I got my bag and walked out.

We ended up making a complaint about that teacher and apparently my Head of Year was appalled when my Mum told him what had happened.
I think that teacher got into a bit of bother over it actually but I have little sympathy.

I mention the above particularly because I think it underlines you can end up doing more harm going back too early after someone dies.
I should have taken more time off school.

@ChaosAndCrumbs

It's my experience that work places are very prescriptive over time off, anything over their formula has to be annual leave or sick leave with fit note. Some employers may be amazing but the vast majority are pretty strict on compassionate leave with full pay. My dp was lucky, his employer wasn't strict and he can work from home anyway, he took 3 days off plus the funeral in full, then was spending part of the working day sorting out arrangements etc instead of working on other days. I took two days off and availed myself of company equipment, paper and toner...

Society is a bit skewed when your daughter is in trouble for four days bereavement leave when your employer is happy to give you three months still ongoing bereavement leave

I'm sorry for your loss. What did the e-mail say? Did it sound like a generic statement of attendance and the likely impact blah blah? I'd be tempted to contact the school and just ask why the e-mail was sent - was it part of a tranche that are sent to parents at certain times of the year? If they say yes, then just reply repeating the reasons why she was absent and that you are confident that she is on top of her work.

I feel that it's quite a long time to have off. My DS grandparent died yesterday and he'll be in school Monday morning as normal.

First, I'm sorry to hear about your loss.

Personally, I think it's quite a long time to have off. Many people wouldn't be allowed that long off work for a grandparent. Given DD1 is clearly in secondary/grammar, she's probably under pressure given exams are coming up in the next year or so, also, she's growing up and part of that is having to deal with bereavements alongside whatever else life requires of us.

Admittedly I can only remember two of my GPs passing, one on a Sunday and I went to school the next day, the other passed away late at night and family came back to ours in middle of night, despite that I went into school. We did give DD the option of the day off after her grandparents died, but she felt she'd deal with it better if she had another focus and the support of her friends.

Fair enough. We’re creative and tech industries intersection, so perhaps different? I’m the employer, so it can be difficult to juggle lots of leave on a small team, but ime lots of the other companies we know have similarly non-prescriptive rules. Perhaps we’ve just been fortunate in who we know and I’ve wrongly applied that. Out of those who aren’t prescriptive that I know, none would be dismayed at 4 days off and a couple of extra for the funeral for a close family member who was important to the person. However, usually it would be explained that they were a key figure in their life etc.

This was my favourite reply x

I just want to say well done for standing up for yourself - that must have been really hard when you were already so traumatised..

Thank you x

What sort of world are we living in that anyone thinks that this was too long an absence for the sudden death of a beloved grandmother?
My mother died suddenly a couple of years ago. It was devasting to us, her family who loved her. No-one has the right to dictate how long someone needs in these circumstances.

Schools are required to do this by the LA, and ultimately the government. However, how they approach it is more a matter of school policy within that framework.

The school could have offered counselling and support whilst acknowledging the absence.

So a few more details. I forgot about this before. When we phoned to tell school dd1 would be absent for the funeral we were told that the school policy accepted a 2 day absence if the funeral was some distance away which we told them it was.

Secondly another parent has just told me she got the same letter and her child had missed 4 days of school (reason unknown I didn't ask). So I would have got the shitty letter anyway even if I sent dd1 back earlier.

I accept the letter is generic now as I didn't think it was - they have been tailored. I think that annoys me more.

I've gone around in circles with this but I'm back to drafting a stinking complaint about their lack of trauma informed practice.

I got the same kind of letter on a Friday and was very offended. I read it back on the Monday ready to compose a reply and realised it was written quite fairly and was likely just them doing their jobs 😅

I think it’s best to sleep on it. We have a natural defensive mechanism with anything that might question our parenting I guess.

What irked me though was that she had missed 3 school days and they called it “6 learning sessions”. How does one day of 5 lessons make 2 learning sessions? In my mind they had doubled the number to make it seem worse!

Jesus fucking Christ, four days is unusually long? Cold heartless bastards.

I've just had two of these letters as I have children at different schools, very different situations as DS2 at primary is sometimes school refusing. DS1 at secondary has SEND and finds school really hard but goes regardless, he just happens to have more than 'average' sickness this year. The tone of the letters was very different. Schools have to send these letters yes, but they can choose how they frame them. I didn't complain about the letter for DS2 and won't, he is over the threshold for prosecution and I know they are required to send it. I did complain about the letter from the secondary which was basically just threatening prosecution. Complaint when nowhere and was pointless but did help dispel some of my rage about the whole thing. Also made quite clear the HOY is fairly clueless about SEND but that's not a surprise.

YANBU. And how nasty of them to be shitty on the phone straight after you lost your mother.

Personally, I think it's quite a long time to have off. Many people wouldn't be allowed that long off work for a grandparent. Given DD1 is clearly in secondary/grammar, she's probably under pressure given exams are coming up in the next year or so, also, she's growing up and part of that is having to deal with bereavements alongside whatever else life requires of us.

And herein lies why we have such significant problems with poor mental health. Whatever life requires of you, you need to deal with it. Bereavement of a close relative - get back to school no matter how you’re feeling, how you’re coping, just deal with it. At 14 you should have all the skills you need to just keep on going. Grieve in your own time, in a socially acceptable way. What utter nonsense.

@pastypirate I’d have kept my kids off, and raised absolute hell if the school dared to challenge me on it. You’ve modelled that it’s important to take the time you need when life trips us up, and that it’s ok to put your own needs first. I hope your DDs are doing ok and am very sorry for your loss.