WFH causing school refusal to increase.

[rivalsbinge]

I read a thought provoking post on LinkedIn a comment about school refusals being so much higher since WFH became more "normal"

In essence the thought was a lack of everyone up, dressed out the door, it's now kids up breakfast dressed smart, out the door with parents in PJs or leisure wear going back home to work and the kids knowing that parents are at home makes them more likely to want to also stay home.

Obviously the parents do work but the kids (age dependent) are not seeing this and are thinking work/ school is now optional.

I did think this poster may have a valid point but interested in what others think, I'm also not talking about SEN and other considerations.

Yeah this. My mother was a SAHM so she was always around. So were all my friends’ mothers.

Interesting. I'm a little younger than you, elder millennial, and I'd have said there was a loooot of persistent absence in the 90s. We just didn't call it that, and it wasn't seen as so much of a problem then. It may be social class dependent.

Yes there was absence in certain groups of people. They barely turned up then couldn’t rejoin because they were lost. They eventually left school completely. But the vast majority attended school every day. I feel like we’ve lost our way.

And those parents just following the social media trend that it’s fine to miss school if your child has sen.

Good grief. It's absolutely not 'fine' for most families with disabled children, but what option is there when schools are so wholly unequipped to meet need and there are no spaces in suitable provisions?

It might be all over social media but that doesn't mean it's a 'trend' in the way you mean here - it's a worrying, life-upending and sadly all too common fact of life that a significant subset of children (and statistics show that a very very high percentage - something like 92% - of persistently absent kids have SEN) are unable to manage 32.5 hours a week in school.

Why is it the case that this is a new thing do you think? Neurodivergence has always been there. Why can children suddenly not manage in school when for previous generations they managed through school. And school was brutal then. No one being accommodating to differences. There was little awareness, if any. No understanding at all. Why is it now that there is more understanding than ever about inclusion that more children than ever can’t manage in schools? I’m interested in your thoughts.

@Flipflop223

Firstly, is it a new thing?! I went to a very good school (a CityTechnology College if anyone remembers them) and there were several kids in our year who rarely showed up, or who were late to every lesson, or who spent every day in the nurses office.

Secondly, yes I do think schools have become more hostile. Teachers are, as a group, unsatisfied and stressed. Kids, neurodivergent or otherwise, pick up on this. Things like toilets being locked, school uniform being strict (eg can't take blazers off until you get permission from a teacher) lead to kids feeling trapped. Constant formative and summative assessments - for a lot of neurodivergent people assessments are challenging, even if they're academically bright and able. Schools are busy and children are physically larger than ever - kids feel overwhelmed. Lunchtimes and breaktimes have often been shortened due to behaviour issues / lack of funds for dinner ladies. Play is an important human right for all children and now they're expected to cram in queueing for food, eating, going to the loo (remember this is locked at all other times) and socialising into a 30 minute lunch break

Added to this a great many children arrive at school with their "sensory bucket" already quite full due to generalised over stimulation / chasing dopamine as a population. Add in a few loud corridors and a smelly canteen and neurodivergent children (as well as a good proportion of neurotypical ones) simply can't cope. And when they can't cope, they lash out and make the environment even more unbearable for other kids - and the cycle continues.

As a teacher, I agree with all of that. Add in a household full of stressed parents both trying to work full time to pay for childcare, huge mortgages, growing energy/food prices and having little time or money for anything other than the bare minimum, you've got a pretty crappy situation all round.

When kids, parents and teachers are stressed and the government pile on more attendance fines, make it impossible for them to ever afford a holiday in the summer or be able to take them out in term time, it feels pretty bleak.

I’m not sure about this. I don’t remember school being a nurturing place at all. My teachers looked disinterested and grumpy. I felt like I was on a conveyor belt. I felt that the only reason the teachers were there as because they were paid to be. So, reluctantly. There was behavioural issues and the kids from certain feeder schools were hugely disruptive and destructive and I found that quite stressful. There were so many rules - you can’t do this, you have to do that. The school was massively oversubscribed and overcrowded and the classrooms were stuffed full of kids. I do feel that if you rewind the clock 20/30 years ago, people just got on with it more. There wasn’t really the option to miss school because everyone knew the reality was that if you didn’t do well at school, you were trapped in poverty. There was a recognition that life wasn’t fair and I firmly for that message at school. Which, it turns out, was a pretty good lesson for life because life is hard and you have to stand on your own two feet. So yes I think it’s very much a new thing. And a very troubling thing

There wasn’t really the option to miss school because everyone knew the reality was that if you didn’t do well at school, you were trapped in poverty.

I remember plenty of kids 'skiving' 35 years ago when I was at school!

I don’t get this argument. Living standards are immeasurably higher than for my parents’ generation. Even than my own generation. They quite literally had nothing. They grew up with a few toys, no tv, no car. They had to bus it everywhere or walk - it took ages. Everything was cleaned by hand. They had a few coins left at the end of the week. No central heating. Freezing winters. My mum had to wear her school uniform in the school holidays because she had so few clothes. Detached parents, corporal punishments in school. Little and plain food. No snacks. Long working days with all the manual houseork combined with long working hours. Sharing rooms and beds with family members. School was a brutal place. My dad had a teacher who kept a brick in his desk and would launch it across the room when kids were being boisterous. You can’t argue that economic and social conditions are worse. What has changed is that the expectations we have are very different. Everyone wants the world. And they can’t deal with it when they don’t get it.

Yes but now it’s baseline of 20% and I’ve seen some stats standing at 40% having one day off in 10. That’s huge

Attitudes towards school attendance have declined since lockdowns and teaching strikes.
Added to that, anxiety, depression and behaviour problems have been rising rapidly in older primary age children and teens since it became common place for that age group to have smartphones and access to social media. I'd imagine that is also playing a significant part in the school refusal stats.

It's nothing to do with WFH. But another convenient way to turn the general public against WFH parents instead of addressing the real problems with school attendance.

Why is it the case that this is a new thing do you think? Neurodivergence has always been there. Why can children suddenly not manage in school when for previous generations they managed through school. And school was brutal then. No one being accommodating to differences. There was little awareness, if any. No understanding at all. Why is it now that there is more understanding than ever about inclusion that more children than ever can’t manage in schools? I’m interested in your thoughts.

A few things.

Attendance was just as bad , just no one was particularly bothered.

Children kept at home , or going to SEN schools (there WERE more).

Children beaten into submission . You can't parent the autism out of a child , but you can definitely beat them into masking.

Children institutionalised.

Depending how far back you get the "ineducable" section, children literally deemed incapable of being educated.

Then you have all the others, the addicts, the drop outs , the married/pregnant young , the ones that killed themselves, the homeless, the runaways, the ones that crashed and burned even if later on.

Where the hell was it the norm to have a non-working say parent in the 80s and 90s. Most hardworking poor people have never had that experience.

I dropped my son to club today at local secondary school (he is 8) and it's my first encounter with secondary.
One thing (as I foreigner) I noticed was how enormous the school was. Looking online it's 1200!!! kids.
There are normally about 300 kids in secondary where I'm from.
So maybe that's why the strict uniform etc.. crowd control.
There is no way my 11 yo ASD kid could even visit, never mind attend there. It was overwhelming as an adult. And there were only 20 kids. How noisy it must get 🙈

My school has 1600 back in the 90s. Lots of autistic and ND people there, myself included

Ohhh we differ there. Both primary and secondaries are absolutely huge , especially in big towns/cities.

In fact, my primary was twice the size of my high school.

7 years with 4/5 form entries(some classes had like 40 kids) vs 4 years with 6/7 form entires. Absolutely huge.

Gosh, that's a lot 😱

When I was a child, most of us had stay at home mums. We all still went to school.
Also, as someone who works from home, having a child at home when you’re trying to work is b**y annoying!

I think until they adddress the amount of preventable airborne infections circulating in schools, acknowledge the number of kids suffering with long covid and acknowledge that covid infections can have a long term impact on mental health (shown in some studies), we can't move forward with any of this. Covid and other infections circulating are not the only problems. But they're certainly a factor. And one that could be relatively easily addressed if there was the political will.

I have an Sen child previously in mainstream now in special school and controversial view but I do think it is sometimes an easier option for both schools and parents to send/keep an Sen child home if it is an available option, going out to work makes this option more tricky. My son’s school had lots of issues with him having meltdowns as he’s autistic and at that time his needs weren’t being met. They’d ring me to collect him if he was being difficult, I started to refuse as it was effecting my work unless it was a formal exclusion, and they then applied for an ehcp and eventually he got special school. Yet I know of children where a parent doesn’t work and the child has been managed through primary by phoning parents to collect each time they were difficult, child then goes up to mainstream secondary with no support or ehcp in place and lasts weeks before they are completly out of school as can’t manage, once they are out of school for a period of time it’s more difficult to get them back.

So some dude then?

I had a thread on this as the head of Ofsted said the same and I’m guessing this not-dude got it from that.

There are absolutely no stats, proof of research to suggest WFH affects attendance. Musings from people with lenses does not facts make. It’s not more relevant than wondering if people who have yellow sofas are affecting school attendance - we KNOW what impacts school attendance. Low income households being one of them. Rather than musings about what other things could happen it would be so much nicer if people actually focused how we can address what we DO know is the problem.

There’s a lot of push back from WFH at the moment, with mumblings about “some people are piss takers” - but this is nothing new. Offices have had piss takers for as long as offices existed.

@JandamiHash you knew I meant my post wasn't about that particular ofsted guy.

What was the outcome of your thread? Similar to this one?

A fraction of very angry people saying that this bloke was going off stats (he wasn’t) and saying I hadn’t read the article (I had), a few people saying he’s right, and about IIRC the vote was about 70% IWNBU

in My opinion there are several reasons. Firstly as a child I don’t think you always notice what is happening outside of your immediate circle. Looking back there were definitely kids at our school who were nd, we had a girl in our class whose attendance was very poor and then after about two years she just disappeared, none of my school friends can even remember her now. Also in 80s and start of 90s schools were not assessed based on children’s results, so there was less pressure on school staff and children to get all children up to a level. Lots of children in the 80s left school not able to read or write so it wasn’t a good thing but it just meant there wasn’t the same pressure on either party so you didn’t get kids hating school so much as they would just sit and colour or play with toys rather than have pressure out on them for hours a day to do something they really struggle with