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.

Define "SEND"? Special educational needs has only been an official term since 1981 (well within the lifetime of many people posting here). Current SEN guidance dates back to the SEN Code 2014.

The term "ineducable" was only outlawed in 1970!

When people say "there never used to be XYZ" they are generally not comparing like with like. There certainly wasn't a presumption that ALL children would or could be educated in the same way, in the time periods to which comparisons are being made.

People on here get such a bee in their bonnet honestly! It’s like you can’t start a discussion or have an opinion when that’s what the forum is for!

Attendance is in the high 90s in most schools. It fell a bit post 2020 for obvious reasons. It's improved a bit over the last year.

When you consider the low budget, inflexible system we've got, I sometimes think it's rather high.

I also think the vast majority of parents would massively prefer their DC went to school!

well there are multiple reasons but one of the main ones is the lack of early intervention and the build up from that. Everyone bangs on about how early intervention is key etc etc, but over the last 15 years of austerity early intervention has been cut to the bone and is now virtually non existent in many places. So instead of a child getting early intervention through things like sure start etc people just have to muddle through, the child’s Sen don’t go away or get better due to having no early intervention they get worse until they hit crisis point, then the waiting lists for paediatricians and cahms are years long. The ehcp system to get support in schools pits parents against local authorities and it can take years of a child being out of school and waiting for tribunal just to get enough support for the child to access an education. So basically we are now dealing with the fall out from all this

That doesn’t follow. Early intervention is of course great, but the numbers of sen children are many, many multiples of even a decade ago. So the removal of early intervention does not explain much at all.

Nothing to do with WFH but it is to do with how some parents treat teachers and school. Turning up to drop them off in PJ's doesn't exactly foster the idea of self-discipline and striving, does it I don't know any parents who don't get dressed for school dropoff, because I'm not friends with such lazy sacks of shit. And someone will show up in a minute talking about their long term health condition....🙄

The attendance debate is making me really angry because no one is asking why children don't want to go to school. It is not addressing the root cause at all. Yet ask any teacher and they will tell you exactly what the problem is-
School is too hard.
School isn't fun anymore.
The curriculum is too hard and massively overloaded.
The pace that has to be worked at is completely overwhelming for both staff and children.
Teachers are overworked and stressed -this inevitably has an impact.
Teachers are leaving in their droves meaning remaining staff are teaching outside their expertise having a knock on effect on provision. Also meaning crap teachers are getting jobs they shouldn't because a crap teacher is better than no teacher.
Funding is woefully inadequate so there aren't the resources needed to make learning more hands on and fun.
Children with SEND are not having their needs met due to the pace and difficulty of the curriculum.
TA support has been stripped to the bone so that those with SEND are not getting the support they need. This can then result in overwhelmed behaviour which negatively impacts other children.
Inclusion at all costs has been pushed even when it is to the detriment of both the child with SEN and those around them.
There is an ever revolving door of people watching and monitoring teachers' every move meanjng they cannot have the autonomy they want and causing a constant state of anxiety which impacts the children both directly and indirectly.
Schools are a hotbed of stress and pressure and this atmosphere is tangible.
There are too many tests and exams for young children. The levels of testing in Primary are ludicrous now and this causes anxiety.
Children are under constant pressure to improve and do better and meet targets etc. Pressure put on teachers to achieve the impossible- making every child average means children are being forced to try to achieve what is impossible and leads to negative self-esteem etc. It's all push, push, push and progress, progress, progress. We have a normal distribution and need to stop acting like we can change that and give children the opportunities to work to their strengths not constantly move to an unattainable "expected" level. Or to have an obsession with pushing bright children to even higher levels. I was a high-attaining child and being constantly "challenged" would have destroyed me and made my perfectionist tendencies even worse. It's ok to excel and not have to bloody strive so high you feel like a failure then when you can't meet that ever-rising bar.
Obsession with data means more time is spent weighing the pig than actually feeding it.
Teachers do not have time to devote to personal development skills that children need and just being there for them when needed.
Goalposts are constantly moving and things changing. Ofsted has created a culture where pressure is horrendous and proving you are doing the job has become the be all and end all. Everything is done for Ofsted and teachers are so busy with stupid paperwork, data gathering and proving they are doing the job, that actual teaching and investment in the children has become the smallest part of the job.
I'm sure other teachers can add more but the current system is broken for both teachers and children. We cannot carry on like this. School is not the place of fun and joy it should be.

@Flipflop223 you might want to look at data from 2008 and before.

Why does it not follow? If a child is supported well early it is likely to to follow that they’ll have a better outcome and will improve, so by the time they are in school they only need very low level interventions or needs aren’t even severe enough to be on the Sen register. So something like speech therapy for example, a child has early communication needs, years ago they’d have got speech therapy which hopefully would improve things and eventually they’d be able to integrate into the classroom. Now speech therapy has been cut, child gets put in mainstream school, they struggle to communicate, get frustrated, end up so frustrated they are throwing chairs or ripping pictures from the walls. Child by this time needs 1-1 support so school applies for ehcp, they are turned down by, parents appeal to tribunal which has a year wait. Child’s behaviour and frustrations escalating at school they have to be isolated from other children as they have become a danger, child doesn’t want to go to school as finding the isolation traumatic, parents have a major fight to get them in every day and then within an hour the school call to collect as they can’t manage. Parent gives up and ends up keeping the child home while they wait for tribunal. This kind of situation isn’t extreme or unusual.

Totally agree, and also “inclusion” isn’t actually inclusion. It’s trying to do things more cheaply by saying it is inclusion. True inclusion as in integrating disabled/sen children into a mainstream classroom successfully would actually mean the child was properly supported by a ta or whatever it was that was required.

"Totally agree, and also “inclusion” isn’t actually inclusion. It’s trying to do things more cheaply by saying it is inclusion. True inclusion as in integrating disabled/sen children into a mainstream classroom successfully would actually mean the child was properly supported by a ta or whatever it was that was required."

Exactly- it's nothing to do with meeting the needs of those children (which we aren't). It's about money and saving it.

Compared to school in other countries or to my schooldays I really don’t think the work is that challenging.

What is challenging is group work, chatting, overwhelm caused by sensory overload ie hot classrooms/bright lights/overcrowding/multiple sources of noise, poor behaviour causing fear and stress and a sense of injustice when badly behaved pupils are seen to go unpunished, confusion due to the use of random worksheets rather than clearly laid out textbooks, being forced to do tests online and being told your answer is „wrong“ purely because you haven’t input the exact text the computer wants, poor IT hardware that doesn’t actually function, being force fed ideology … to name but a few. School today as an environment is not easy. I’m sure this affects all pupils but it especially true for ND or sensitive kids.

One also wonders whether it would be so attractive to miss school if the alternative was didn’t involve screens … 24/7 Internet access means it is a lot harder to get plain old bored at home ….

Obviously I don’t have data but it would be interesting to test the hypothesis: would removing smartphones during school hours affect truancy rates…?

I've been teaching for a very long time. The expectations have increased hugely in that time and the work is far more challenging at Primary level than when I started teaching or when I went to school. The current curriculum is horrible and far too full meaning nothing is embedded and you are constantly revisiting because you've had to move on too quickly.

Well, we sort of already have in that attendance before the Internet era was poor. The increase was from around the late 90s. There were videos and computer games well before that also, but I don't think attendance before widespread home videos was exactly universal either.

True. I’d be interested in researching the impact of the smartphone with specific reference to online “friendships”, or membership of certain groups, online identities adopted and so on and whether that sense of belonging/community found online might make it easier to forego real life interaction. Not sure about timelines for introduction of these but late 90s doesn’t sound a million miles off.

@LyndaLaHughes's post really nails it!

I would add: ASD is the major type of SEN these days (I would guess partly due to better awareness and diagnosis and to diagnosis of females).

ASD doesn't necessarily mean children who struggle intellectually, but our system is woefully poor for able autistic learners.

There's another post on here from a mum being driven to distraction by her autistic son's school refusing and from her description of her son's feelings about school, he is an astute young man! Some of the learners who are struggling know very well they are being short-changed.

I have an AuDHD high attaining child and I totally agree. I have fought really to get her understood and teachers tat

Sorry! Teachers trained to support her and her needs to be met. Now she is doing really well but only because I'm on their case and problem solving. Training for ND is woeful - again an issue caused by lack of funding.

Just so posters are aware, there was under 3% of unauthorised absence at secondary in 2024-5 (authorised, which is an additional 5% or so, includes illness although there's probably some mental ill health contained in the unauthorised figure).

So I don't think there was much online identity development in the late 90s. From what I could tell, it wasn't til well into the 00s that a majority of the population even used the Internet regularly.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/468663/uk-internet-penetration/

Smartphone saturation is early 2010s.

I would also say that in my experience it is ADHD where there is a huge lack of understanding and children really misunderstood and misjudged. Especially girls who are totally missed and failed. Training on ADHD specifically is non existent. Not the fault of teachers but a massive failing of the system.

Oh, me too. Getting my DD's needs met has required spending a fortune plus all my free hours for many years.

Yet her dad (very similar type of brain) wasn't seen as a problem at school in the 70s and 80s. Bit eccentric maybe?

Tbf, where there's a will , there's a way. We had several trainings on ASD, ADHD , attachment disorders, SEMH etc. for all staff. Some learned more than others.

I suggested having a few sessions on female presentations for at least ASD and ADHD as they're severely lacking in representation. We'll see if it gets done.

I have been teaching 15 years and have probably had a grand total of 5 or 6 hours CPD on SEN (from school - setting aside my own efforts to self-educate) and that is probably more than some.