Are we losing the plot re: attendance?

[BlueySchmooey]

Are we losing the plot re: attendance?

https://x.com/catinthehat/status/1840399910769672198?s=46&t=G9BWOZlYGPa11_pR7aKkbHQ

My teen has 0% attendance and it took almost a year for school to sort out on-line learning for her. When the shit really hits the fan it's amazing how little support there is and how many different services you get passed between.

Look at Labour Party Education Policy. She's proving to be much more obsessive about attendance than the Tories

To rely to a PP dragging a child with EBSA into school is literally the worst thing you can do. I know, I did it, all it does is make things worse.

When we first saw the Educational Psychologist she told DD to take 2 weeks off and get her head straight before trying to come in. Wonder if they could do that. I’ve seen her in the school reception and she is astonished at how well she is doing now.

In Bridget Phillipson's own words.

x.com/bphillipsonMP/status/1830199711753494800?t=F3P-OrT40SmfY2IEKRPz_Q&s=19

Last year DD1 had 2000% attendance on her report as someone fucked up inputting the data to calculate the percentages and caused mass hilarity.

I'm waiting for our Attendance Rottweiler to call me and complain that DD2 will be missing a day of school later this week for a medical appointment we've been waiting three fucking years for so will NOT be rescheduling. There is no subtlety, no looking at circumstances, no looking at the child - just fucking data.

Some of these responses 💐. There are parents and kids calling out for help, many ironically so that their kids can attend school.

Agree with PP who said if it was like the real world, there would be some flex, including online provision. It wouldn't be a rigid one size fits all approach either.

As for an increase in overall absence since pre-pandemic - of course there is. We now have lots of covid around repeatedly. Even if the kids that feel well enough to attend school with it (and parking the obvious impact of that on other's attendance and education), there will still be a number of children who feel too ill to attend with it. How would there be better attendance with an additional illness thrown into the mix? That's not even including the longer term health (including mental health) issues attributable just to covid, nor the increased susceptibility to other illnesses after an infection.

Lockdown also very much highlighted that one size didn't fit all - just like one size fits all doesn't work for school - or in the working world.

There were huge disparities between amount (and value) of work sent out, to how many if any devices were in a home, to how much parental support could be given, to those kids who thrived out of the school environment, to the kids who struggled to cope out of the school environment. Others were told they were 'behind', rather than being met where they were or having some flex in the curriculum, as though nothing was superfluous. In the real world, many deadlines changed.
Some kids progressed at a much faster rate academically than they would have done at school - for others, the reverse.
There would have been kids in school in lockdown that didn't want to be and kids at home that would have rather been in school. There were kids who witnessed what covid was capable of, trying to cope with the aftermath.

There were/are clinically vulnerable kids being told that their health - and life - are unimportant. "Only affects vulnerable people" - er, that's ok then, they don't count?! Of course, many previously 'healthy' people, including children are living with long covid too.

The catch up fund was dire and is an example of how what government says is important and what they really deem as important are very different. Just as doing nothing about indoor air in schools to reduce illness and help attendance.

Education is important, of course it is. So is health and wellbeing.

This makes me so bloody angry. My lovely 13 year old dd has severe anxiety, ocd and agoraphobia and was also diagnosed with ASD last November after a huge delay due to Covid. She struggled massively with the change of going to high school but was still in top set as is very academic. She managed roughly 75% attendance in year 7 but year 8 broke her and she hasn’t attended school since October last year and I’ve tried everything to get some help but have been let down so badly by her school who only acknowledged her ASD in June this year when I had to go for an interview under caution at the LA where I finally met the school SENCO and asked some questions.

I was forced into a corner by the LA who told me I would be getting prosecuted and fined unless my dd attended school or I de-register her so that’s what I had to do on Friday. I’ve never felt so alone. I have a life limiting illness and am so unwell. I have an older dc with autism too and I just can’t cope. They can shove their attendance figures up their arses for all I care.

It sounds like presenteeism is the best way no matter what, and Mr. Gradgrind rules again.

Like a pp, I have friends in Ireland (Republic of) and their education system is great according to them, no fixation on attendance (although it is monitored), and a relaxed attitude to taking kids (mostly primary) out of school in term time for holidays etc. The standards are consistently high and the teaching profession is a highly regarded and sought after and very well paid career.

There's a lot to unpick isn't there?

Yep it was! Made me cry. My daughter cry. It solved nothing!

I will not do that ever again.

For me though all of this focused on the what - children should be in school, learning with their peers. Well yes for the most part they should but it doesn’t focus or help the why. Why some aren’t, why for some attendance drops and how you can help that.

putting the focus on rewarding something many don’t have control over - illness/accidents/bereavements happen and mean that for the vast majority 100% is an unreachable/unattainable and unrealistic goal particularly as a day off at this stage has a huge effect on attendance. Over 95% as the green level seems much more achieveable

DD had awful Covid September 2022 and needed 4 days off (the Queens funeral and an inset day was the only reason it wasn’t 6) and that followed her throughout the year at tutor meetings, letters saying we needed to keep an eye on her attendance when she had Covid FFS

It comes from the top though. If a school has very low attendance it will impact their Ofsted grade. They have to show what they are doing to tackle the issue. I’m not saying it’s right! But change has to come from the government and Ofsted.

I remember how stressed I was when my DS kept getting recurrent strep tonsillitis. He had a lot of time off school and school was very unhappy. He needed to have 7 infections in 12 months to qualify for a tonsillectomy. It comes to something when you are praying for your child to get very ill in a qualifying window so that he can have surgery which will immediately improve health and therefore attendance.
And that was a physical thing that had a practical solution. Easy.
God help parents of children with ongoing SEN/EBSA/MH problems 💐

It's also a quantitative measure of input rather than qualitative.

My children may miss a fair bit of school due to chronic illness (genetic) but they both work really hard when they are there -as evidenced by every single school report. They also do all their homework and put a lot of effort into it.

I’m noticing a big upturn in schools and LEA’s engaging in this unlawful off-rolling game too. Disgraceful they are. If only we had any energy left to fight.

People send sick children to school because of this. It's ridiculous.

And it's ridiculous to blame families for medical appointments during hours. No choice!

Pretty sure this is a Canva template. So this probably isn’t a poster that is sent out to schools, it looks like the school head or a staff member must have filled it in and put it on the website.

Really? You're blaming her for things that happened before she came into power? Is none of it the fault of the many Tory education ministers?

Sure but if you had a chronic illness your maths would change.

If you had a stomach condition that meant you spent up until 11am every sjngle day on the toilet you would probably look at jobs that started later.

If you had chronic fatigue that meant you could only focus for four hours a day you would look at part time working.

If you had a serious illness that could be treated but couldn't work whilst treatment went on then you might take sick leave.

If you had a poor immune system where a cold might kill you you would wfh.

If you were literally incapable of working because of a serious illness which was unremitting and affected you every single day you would...probably be fighting with a government which called you a lazy slacker but ideally on some kind of disability support.

We don't give those choices to children. Some might be offered a SEND school if they are very lucky but those are hard to get into and come with much lower life expectations. We offer very little for the bright child whose body doesn't work right and almost nothing for the child who needs to take a year or two out then resuma education. It doesn't matter if you had cancer treatment in your teens, GCSEs are done at 16 and resit classes are beyond poor.

Makes me furious to be honest. For starters there's no actual support for those children and families with low attendance for reasons beyond illness. There's a stick to beat them with, but no actual means to support them to make effective changes (this is outwith the role of the school I know, but wider agencies etc that have been cut to the bone). Secondly of course the cycle of encouraging children to come in when they're poorly to avoid absence means children with underlying conditions or disabilities then catch more and are often off for long periods as they get seriously unwell. Nothing about this works. My DS was in PICU and then in and out of hospital following pneumonia in reception year; his attendance was below 80% but whenever he was well enough he went in and instead of being proud of himself (we were of course) he was berated by the school and made to feel he'd been naughty. Fortunately we were able to move schools and they're better.

For many children school isn't their safe space. They're not allowed to use the toilet when they need to, and when they do it's trashed or the shitty kids are hanging out in there, they're not allowed to wear weather appropriate clothes or eat lunch without scoffing it down in a rush. If an employer treated staff like it they'd quickly go out of business as everyone would leave.

If you have a shit home, school is probably nice. But for most kids with a decent home it's to be endured.

Or the failure of the schools to effectively deal with bullying, a Friends daughter effectively home schooled herself as her school could not (or more accurately would not) keep her safe from the after affects of a horrible sexual assault against her by another pupil and she was bullied relentlessly by peers acting on his behalf. The solution offered by the school was to effectively penalise my friend's extremely academic daughter by putting her in the Sen unit with children with learning disabilities to "protect her". They basically washed their hands of her and told my friend she should move schools.
she was totally written off but still got 8 & 9s for her GCSEs despite everything that happened as she pretty much taught herself at home.

We home educate and we're active in our local HE community. This academic year we have a large influx of new home educators with anxiety and related issues, who are purely deregistering because they've been warned that the fines are non negotiable and will definitely apply to their school refusal (which is already an insulting term for fear related emotional collapse). They don't want to home educate but no longer have a choice. Who does that help?!

This is a way too common scenario - in primary school, my DD was relentlessly hassled by a boy in the playground. I complained repeatedly and requested he was kept away from her. Nothing was done and eventually, to our complete devastation as a family, she was SA’d inside a play structure during break. She couldn’t even tell me what had happened to her for a couple of weeks, when I finally discovered that they were keeping her indoors whilst said boy continued to terrorise others outside. I deregistered her for a year until secondary school.

This is pretty much what has happened to us. Forced into it as no choice apart from fines and prosecution. I had to attend an interview under caution with the LA which was awful. My dd has been let down so badly.

So many children and parents being let down. It looks like this government is going to bang the attendance drum too, without really addressing the causes.