Stop.Sending.Sick.Kids.To.School

[Jorvik1978]

The whole of my son's year group and the year below have been sent home from school thus morning as they have been decimated by D&V. Only 19 out of 34 in my son's class made it in this morning and another one was sick on the way home.

I know it can be hard to figure out arrangements if your child needs to stay home, and symptoms came come on quickly, but please, if your child shows signs of being ill, keep them at home! Schools have 48 hour policies to avoid this sort of thing happening.

It's sad that these policies put children at the bottom of the list of priorities. Children face the consequences of ridiculous amounts of illness along with increasingly creaking services to deal with them. I include mental health in that - not from having a couple of days off when ill - but from high exposure to illnesses that affect brain and behaviour e.g. covid. As the numbers of people who cannot work increases, I hope all who do not push back on these harmful policies do not moan about the rising costs.

DD is in year 5 and doing a maths test next week, school have said they should come in even if ill. Maybe for GCSEs I'd consider sending a sick kid but not this.

Same school lost the plot when DS1 had 3 days off for emergency surgery after a rugby injury. I'll continue to use my own judgement and I'd love them to take me to court over it.

I work in a school, they don't apply these policies to staff, some of whom have a phenomenal amount of time off sick.

Stop.Undermining.Parental.Authority.By.Unnecessarily.Badgering.Responsible.Parents.About.Attendance.

They're two sides of the same coin.

Hahahahahahahahaha

My son's school phoned me regarding his absence while he was in the operating theatre (they knew about it).

I also got an official warning regarding his absence a few days later.

Why? He’d been kept off school due to chicken pox and then later had a (serious) injury, which took his absence over a certain amount.

Schools need to be sensible. Threats from the school mean that I’m going to send my child in I’ll (cough/ cold etc) in case he needs time off for a more serious illness.

Oh and I had to have an attendance meeting myself at work for taking time off to look after him.

Are you joking!? My DD broke several bones and needed several surgeries and we still had the school pestering us every day to bring her in and then punished her for the rest of the term because her attendance had fallen below the required percentage. No-one wants to take a sick kids into school I'd always rather they took one more day to feel fully recovered than went in too soon but it's awful finding out your child has missed out on things, and been given a lectures on attendance and made to feel we've done something terrible and don't value our children's education just because they had the misfortune to be ill.

I was reminded of this thread the other day as my son was sick in school he literally vomited at school and I was told to still send him the next day as the "24 hour rule isn't a thing anymore" apparently!

the LA is in charge of attendance issues rather than schools themselves
they are doggedly going for 100% attendance for all and are quite ok with you sending your kids in sick - i read a news article not so long back which said exactly this

it’s asking for trouble in my view

It comes from the top. Until the school are not under immense pressure from Ofstead/gov to hit or maintain unrealistic attendance targets/figures and therefore are passing the pressure on to parents, bullying them to send their children into school come hell or high water (and threatening with fines etc); then parents will continue to send children into school when they should be at home ill.

Luckily ds7 has near perfect attendance (he just doesn’t happen to be ill a lot this year) but if he wasn’t well enough for school I would keep him off.
However, the one instance he was off with a severe vomiting bug, despite phoning the school to report his absence, I then had a call later in the day from a member of staff saying that I should have sent him into school and they would have made the choice for me and would have sent him home if they deemed it necessary. I, of course laughed down the phone and said how ridiculous that was. I’m more than capable as a parent of making that decision, and he had been vomiting consistently throughout the night and could barely lift his head off his pillow.

Pressure. Your. MPs. To. Stop. The. Batshit. Focus. On. Attendance.

If there are really that number of children in one class off with D&V then I believe the school is obliged to close the areas affected and arrange a deep clean. It's reportable to the LA.

You might want to ask whether this has been done

Parents are being forced to send the. We're currently being Harassed with threats of fines and attendenre officer monitoring. They have told us we HAVE to send them in for them to decide if they are well enough or not... the attendence push by the gov has given schools a lot of control....

I find the pressure from workplaces even worse than the pressure from schools. I have always been strict about keeping my kids home when they're sick and my career has definitely suffered as a result. Even though I have annual leave to use and a legal right to time off for dependents, bosses can be extremely judgemental about last minute changes to plans. The UK has fostered a culture of presenteeism over the last few years. Combine that with promoting under qualified people in order to save money and you end up with incompetent, micro-managing bosses who panic when you don't come in for just one day.