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

I read something today that really resonated on this topic…

If children were too anxious to go home, alarm bells would ring loudly. But if they’re anxious about going into school then that’s ok. Make it make sense.

And yes huge influx of new home educators in my county. Mainly people who have had no choice but also those whose parents have had enough of the toxic system.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg3382380vko.amp there's this on homeschooling increase

Professor Harris says ““The school environment is so diverse and the potential opportunities, with the best will, can’t be recreated at home. There is no replacement for school.”

No prof the school environment is NOT diverse. It’s the opposite of diverse. It’s very much a one-size-fits-all cookie cutter environment.

But yes it is true that school absolutely cannot be created at home. That’s the whole point and joy of it matey 👍

We've had the same. At this point about half of one of our regular social meets are families who have home educated from the start and half are families who have felt forced to deregister due to unmet SEN and mental health needs. This is a social meet where the youngest are babies and the eldest are about 10~11ish. We've had 5 and 6 year olds join, already traumatised by school. We donour beat to welcome them in and support the parents, but no family should be forced to home educate. It should be a free, positive choice and for too many families right now, it is a last resort or forced upon them by illegal off-rolling.

My question is WHY has attendance fallen so much?
I know people will say it’s because of unmet Sen and anxiety needs - but why have these increased so much? I know there are some awful schools, but most aren’t. Why the huge variations? I really think it’s the increase in anxieties and autism that we need to understand.
Is it the mere possibility of home Ed - a self fulfilling prophecy? I don’t think anyone was aware of home Ed when I was growing up in the 80s, not going to school wasn’t an option - it was called truancy in those days and was regarded as ‘naughty’ rather than a cry for help (not saying this was right).
People talk about covid - but it was ages ago now, y7s with low attendance were very young and can barely remember it. People say ‘trust’ was broken with schools - but everyone knows it wasn’t the schools choice?

@Sandysoles the impact of Covid can’t be dismissed. It disrupted really important developmental phases for children of all ages.

when we can see a trauma response in Tiny babies who have been removed into care, years later, I can absolutely see that actions as a small child can impact brain development long term.

Not every person will have a high level of impact, but for some it could be massively harmful and support is needed in the long term.

i think that’s only part of it though. We seem to be in a selfish individualistic phase which doesn’t help. Large numbers of Parents not supporting schools and teachers and not seeing education as important. There are many potential causes for this too.

fundamentally I see much of this as a symptom of a country which has been let down. All the things we talk about all day on this forum, high COL, broken NHS, broken justice system, underfunded police, lack of MH support, loss of places for families to go etc etc etc. People have lost trust in our system to support them. I don’t blame them.

. . . and yet they close or send kids home early at will. my kids getting sent home at 2.20 this Thursday just because the school are having an open evening.

Open Evening? need to plan? deal with it. If you can't do an open evening with kids in lessons till the end of the actual school day - ditch the open evening. It's pathetic.

Instead they expect hundreds of parents to take more time off work to have their kids home early.
Then the gripe on about attendance.

They constantly give the kids a half day on the last day of term as well. For what reason? Just another afternoon of annual leave we all have to book on the schools behalf. Then they moan if you don't send your kid in with painful tonsilitis oh and they are definitely NOT allowed to take a paracetamol to have at lunchtime to help with their pain - it might be ketamin 😱, there might be an overdose 😱. It's a paracetamol you numpties - because you won't let him have a day off!!!

FFS

@ticktickticktickBOOM how old is your child? Do you really need to take an annual leave day when they break up an hour early?

Tick - early closures for parents evenings have always happened so can’t be the cause of the change.

*Many parents are happy to whinge about school and provision, but no one is prepared to train as a teacher or TA, even to help their local school and their children.

Education can't be bespoke.

Doesn't anyone just tell the kids, them the rules suck it up buttercup. Because jobs are like that.*

Except you can choose what you do for work and where you do it. You can choose a job that suits your abilities and that can accommodate your particular needs.

I don't spend my day moving from place to place with a new boss every 50 minutes, constantly having to adjust to the way they work. No one tells me I need to wear x colour shoes and y colour socks, or how to do my hair. No one sends me home if I don't wear x shoes or y socks.

If I am unwell I can take the day off, I can self cert for a week or be signed off for longer if I need it - no one is sending someone to tell me my life chances are ruined. If my coworker is bullying I can address it through workplace policies or change jobs, if someone sexually assaults me I have the law on my side.

As an adult I have infinitely more psychological resources to deal with challenges at work, we're talking about children here.

School in no way reflects modern working life and we need to stop pretending it does.

When I was at school in the 80’s and 90’s , as long as you behaved yourself the teachers ignored you. If you found the work boring or too hard and you just wanted to sit and doodle or look out the window you could. No league tables etc so less pressure on teachers. Now it’s none stop. Our school puts so much pressure on year 11 in particular to stay behind, give up lunch break etc for exam catch up. I honestly can’t remember my mates and I fretting so much about exams. Yes they were a bit worrying but we just revised and did them. There were no intervention sessions etc. School is all about results. We have a one size fits all approach. When I started teaching ages ago we let kids in year 9 go off and do work in salons or garages etc when it was blatantly obvious being in a classroom didn’t suit them. We used to have technical schools, grammar schools, secondary modern etc. Different types of school environments for different kids. It was far from perfect but at least we acknowledged in the past that people are different. Now they all have to do 8 GCSE’s full stop. Vocational qualifications and pathways just aren’t respected. Haven’t a clue why not since most of my peers who skipped university and went straight into a job are earning far more than me. It’s no wonder kids are more anxious these days. Throw in Covid and social media and it’s a recipe for disaster.

@DrRiverSong I agree. COVID had a huge impact in so many ways.

It made children realise they don't HAVE to be in school. So when anxieties and teen MH issues come in there's a precedent.

Plus there is definitely more anxiety in teens since COVID.

It made parents realise the children don't die if they don't go to school. I work with some parents who had problems at school themselves and now feel they prefer to support their children at home rather than pushing and pushing them to go to school.

In so many ways COVID has impacted this.

Covid Isn't Ages Ago. Long Covid in children has doubled over the past year. 1% of all children has #LongCovid and Covid is very high in prevalence tight now. It adversely affects your immune system and makes you susceptible to other conditions such as asthma.

@WalkingCarpet There are testimonies from some kids and parents about how long covid was put down to anxiety or not wanting to go to school. I dread to think what the real figure of long covid in kids is or how many more kids will end up with it by next year.

Yep we get this as well... all well and good but they don't even give us much notice about it - we get like a day's notice max if school is finishing at lunchtime for the end of term (sometimes they do, sometimes they don't)! I have to put through leave requests 2 months in advance - so I'm kind of buggered if that happens, and the kids' school isn't on any direct transport routes or walkable home (which is a consequence of our choice and we fully accepted that we would be on parental taxi duty when we applied there - but a bit of notice wouldn't go amiss please guys!)

The reason we are at an out of catchment school is because the local one has gone totally boot camp bonkers, isolation at the drop of a hat for not staring full eye contact with the teacher - and there's no way DD2 in particular (who is very anxious, autistic but driven to follow all rules exactly, and a bit of a scatterbrain) would have survived there - plus it's got an awful reputation for bullying and SEN support

When I was at primary school (I'm in my 40s) I knew one kid who went to day nursery after school, a handful to childminders who everyone knew and were part of the local community, and the rest went home or to relatives.

I knew my juniors had only two children from out of area, and that was because they'd moved after starting and their parents wanted to retain friendship groups. EVERYONE else attended a s book that was only a few streets away. Everyone.

We all lived in communities where people knew each other, playing out in the sunshine was expected, kids had personal freedom with a good emotional safety net (no phones/trackers but relatives/friends available).

We had almost no homework. We were allowed holidays. We went home sick and weren't in trouble for it.

How can it be a surprise that kids are basket cases now? They barely see their parents, they're controlled and fed fear, there's so much school pressure, no sunlight, no time to relax, no settled community, you may not live near your school friends, and you know from the news that the world is likely ending and there won't be jobs. Joy.

I'm not saying life was perfect. It wasn't. Wives and mothers had less personal freedom, some of the relatives were dodgy, everyone knew someone in their area you had to avoid, bullying could be horrific - but on balance it was a more human tribal way to live.

@Zoflorabore You poor thing. I'm enraged on all of our behalf. The awful thing is that schools don't have to refer families whose children have low attendance to the local authority for fines ‐they can 'manage' the situation on-goingly in-house with support plans and monitoring etc, especially when there is a diagnosis and / or EHCP. We are lucky that after much negotiation and sign-posting to relevant guidance etc, DC1's school took this approach, but we're always feeling on a knife's edge that they might decide to off-roll her refer us to the LA attendance office after all.

The pressure starts young. Kids know about year 6 SATS from school -well before they're in year 6. They're continually told if they're below, on or exceeding targets at school.
Primary school homework wasn't a thing when I was young - it was some spellings and times tables, with an odd project on animals or romans in junior school.
We'd have the odd lesson in the sunshine, snow days, morning and afternoon break. My kids' school even has a massive field which is unused. Kids stay in during their one break if homework isn't neat enough or if errors etc. There are attendance awards and pen licenses and RAG behaviour charts and a whole heap of nonsense that might sound good in theory, but numerous studies have shown don't work in practice. The 'good' kids can feel anxious about going on a list, it's often the same 'naughty' kids that are on it, so doesn't work for them either. Kids that are ahead are not challenged or stretched as they tick the box.

Every day in every school year is not equal and it's daft when policy makers act as though it is. There was a three to four week settle in period for reception - did the kids that started a week early have a massive benefit over the others? I doubt it.

If a kid isn't pressing hard enough with a pencil, why not let them use a pen at the same time as peers and be done with it to solve the issue, rather than insisting on pencil? Why can't a kid take off their jumper without permission? It's just petty.
Why do schools choose to spend so much on supply staff, or increase absence, rather than reduce the amount of illness in schools? HEPA filters are pretty cheap.

Why is the curriculum so packed that if a kid doesn't draw the Mary Rose or something they will screw up their life chances?!

We seem to be going ever more regimented, inflexible, impractical and pushing for environments that damage mental and physical health. At the same time, resources to deal with these are scant.

Schools have changed an awful lot since I was there (30+ years ago) and a lot since my oldest started 20 years ago.

There’s more pressure on children now than there ever was. My youngest back in yr 2 had more pressure for SATs than I did for my GCSEs.
By the end of year 5 pressure ramped up again for yr 6 SATs, which ds barely got through. Complete with the confusing mixed messages of pre-SATs “these are incredibly important, you need to work as hard as you can” to post-SATs “ don’t worry, this has no bearing on who you are, it’s fine to excel in other ways” (if only they could provide balance instead of months of needless stress!).

When I was at school there was an attitude from teachers that we were there to learn, but if we chose not to, or we were disruptive, that was on us. Teach

Aargh tried to edit and it all went wrong 😂

Basically school is not a safe environment for many pupils. Classrooms are set up to meet a high OFSTED standard but this means it’s a sensory nightmare for even NT children.

In primary school there’s often an informal atmosphere, which may appear to be friendly and fun, but at the same time is chaotic and unpredictable for ND pupils, and confusing when they’re expected to learn how to get down to some work. Coupled with loads of teachers having zero idea how to spot or help ND pupils, so it’s typical to have years of struggling (which is traumatic for the child), years of “but he’s fine” (which is gaslighting and traumatic to parents.

More formal school setups, common until the 90s, suited children far more. They felt predictable, you knew without a doubt when it was time to work and when it was time to play. There was far less group work.

Nowadays schools have evolved to be as child unfriendly as possible. The step up in draconian attendance expectations is the tip of the iceberg.

Too many children are literally traumatised by school, and not enough teachers want to make a stand to make things different, even though more teachers are unhappy in their jobs than ever before.

The government needs to start listening to everyone involved, instead of tightening up guidelines that are damaging children.

Covid either traumatised people further, the isolation and helplessness, or it showed them how lovely life was without school. It depends on personality and how you felt about school. Ds blossomed during lockdown. That was the time I felt a sense of doom that HE was inevitable for him. It highlighted how very difficult getting him to school was. Everyone has different experiences of it, but the effects are long lasting. It also set a precedent, rightly or wrongly, that school wasn’t the most important thing of all.

I HE all my DS’s as none of them coped with school and none were well supported. My second son came out at 11. As he has PDA we did no formal academic work, most of what we did was about life skills and employable skills. He had an assessment at 16 and despite no English or maths lessons was found to be on a par with his peers for both, which rather begs the question of how effective school is at educating our children in the first place!

Schools have changed an awful lot since I was there (30+ years ago) and a lot since my oldest started 20 years ago.

Even in size alone, the primary school nearest me has a pupil roll of 800, which was the size of my high school. High schools now are huge, how on earth can teachers build relationships with 2,000 kids, how can kids have any sense of consistency when they are constantly changing classes and teachers even within subjects. The idea of relationships have been replaced with draconian rules, codes of conduct and behaviour management - and we wonder why kids don't want to be in school.

Your son isn't wrong, sadly. It's a desperate situation to be in these days, not being able to afford an alternative to trusting the government with our health and our children's education. Definitely not something to be naive about.

Office for National Statistics figures show that LC in kids has doubled in a year, and many children have also been misdiagnosed as having Functional Neurological Disorder instead of Long Covid or PSNS.

Interesting thread after having a meeting with DD’s HOY again today. The behaviour policies are so unforgiving and archaic. Dd is loosing her spark, hates school but doesn’t want to leave so has started EBSA. I’ve spent the last year being gaslit and now it’s being framed as though it’s poor parenting. I’m utterly burnout already.

That sounds really tough. 💐

PP What is psns? Is it another thing where they dismiss issues and say it's all in someone's head? There's another thread at the moment about a woman with a string of health issues, weight loss, pain, extreme fatigue following a 'cold'...doctor has said it's probably depression ffs. Imagine that desperation as to what's going on as a grown adult, let alone a kid.