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.

What has changed, if anything, will be a very negligible number of parents actually keeping their ill child home , rather than dosing them up with Calpol, crossing their fingers and hoping for the best.

I WFH and still have the discipline. DP works shift so he's all over the place with schedules. From my kids school it's mostly the parents who don't work whose kids don't turn up for school. My school is hot on attendance and there get awards for it so my kids often mention who was off that day. There also a lot of non working parents to who take their kids out of school for cheeper days out like seeing Santa etc and of course the regular school holidays. Mondays and Fridays are also a popular non attendance.

Who takes those children to school? The school run fairy?

I bet Ofsted guy WFH! And has a long suffering wife who gets the kids to school.

I think lockdown was the trigger actually. Before that children were told you have to go to school, it's the law, it's not optional. (There have always been a few school refusers but nothing like the number that are now.)

Then in lockdown they were told, you can't go to school, it's not allowed, stay home and learn from there. And i think a load of kids who hated school or were anxious about school thought oh good, it's not compulsory. I didn't go to school for x months and it was fine. And that's been really hard to "unlearn".

It makes no sense. My mum was a sahm and divorced so never saw either parent having an "out the door" routine never made me think school was optional was the case for many friends too and this was the 00s/10s not the 80s so nothing to do with different times.

Agree. It seems like another nonsense reason to try and undermine wfh by those who have a vested interest in keeping us chained to unnecessary commutes

Archived article here, based on assumptions and opinion , not facts.

archive.ph/zwNPv

I’m surprised about this. My commute was 1 hour before wfh, now it takes me 5 minutes to go to school and collect my son if he’s ill.

Hence, I usually still drop him off if he’s not completely well in the mornings, knowing that I can collect him quickly.
i also think this helps him. If he had to wait for 1h to be collected, he might be more likely to insist on staying at home.

If a child doesn't want to attend school a parent being at home makes no difference. If secondary age, they will simply hang out in a park or shop all day. This isn't about the parents modelling behaviour through WFH but I do think there is a degree in changing attitudes to parenting creating less resilience in children. Pupils cannot seem to cope with the everyday challenges of school anymore.

@BlueSilverCats ah the article is in the Times, that explains it.

I think it's not this simple. It's multifactorial.

I think yes parents are more able to balance the demands of work and sick children. I do myself on occasion. It's easier to have a child off than it ever was. But i also think attitudes have changed in general to the draconian way of teaching we're seeing a return of.

You can't fool children or parents anymore with you have to wear your blazer all the time to prepare for adult life. You'll have to wear uniform or smart clothes for work. You have to do what you're told at work etc. I'm a fully functioning highish paid adult. DH is also a highly paid skilled employee. I'm currently about to start work in my pijamas on the sofa. DH does have an office day today but has gone in jeans, trainers and a hoody, his standard work wear. He can stroll in whenever he gets there and leave when he needs to. No one watching over him. That is the modern reality of work. Schools however haven't caught up. They're no longer preparing children for the workplace as it is and as such we're creating a generation of young people who can't think for themselves or balance their own work and self motivate. My organisation is fully remote and i see this more and more from younger starters. They struggle with the freedoms of the modern workplace and as such are really useless hires sometimes.

Schools may find refusal less if they backed off and gave young people some autonomy and respect.

Rubbish. Many children have always had stay at home mums for most /all of their life and there is no link to school refusal. Me sprinting to make a coffee before my boss calls me for a chat is not an incentive to stay home, where mum will shout bloody murder after my call if you’ve been making noise.

Kids realise nothing is going to happen to them if they refuse.

I think it’s due to the morning timetable, too.

For example, dropping off Parent needs to be on the bus by 8.30 in order to be at work for 9.

Therefore there is a momentum to the morning timetable - parent getting dressed, children dressed, breakfast for everyone, teeth for everyone, bags for everyone, off we go. There is a double imperative - kids must be at school by 8.29 so that parent can get to work (and earn money).

However, if the Parent just needs to be logging on at home by 9 (possibly without shoes, possibly leaving breakfast for later) then the slog of getting child up, dressed, fed, out (in rubbish weather) doesn’t have that second impetus of the parent’s need to be on that 8.30 bus.

It’s also worth noting that the rise in options to WFH may mean that a parent who previously couldn’t work because they needed to be close to school in case of eg a child’s meltdown or a child bolting, now may be able to do some WFH work, albeit perhaps not in highly fixed hours.

Why do teachers and children hate being at school?
Why is there a recruitment and retention crisis in education?
Why is there a mental health epidemic among children??

I dunno, probably lazy parents working from home I guess.

In the recent past, I think there used to be a lot of younger children who were sent to school, too ill to be in school. Parents had child care issues so were very keen for thier child to be in. They'd be in, having had calpol, and be struggling and out of sorts all day, learn nothing and spread it around. I think wfh parents are more likely to let a sick child stay at home and sleep/watch TV.

I think this worry about attendance is quite a recent thing, back in the 80s when I was at school, parents just kept you home if you were ill. Some parents were harsher than others, but there was noone hounding you to send a sick child in and if your parent was a sahm, there was no childcare issue either.

In slippers!! Don't forget the slippers!

I just assumed it was flakey parenting.

Sounds plausible I can remember when I had to leave the house first when I first lived with DP. I was absolutely resentful that he was laying in bed and I was up and out the door at 7am or similar.

I was brought up by parents who went to school during and just after the War. My dad had to leave school at 13 because there wasn't a secondary school where he lived. School leaving age was only actually raised and enforced at 16 in the late 1970s.
Attitudes to school and schools themselves have obviously changed massively in my lifetime. Covid and wfh did have a huge impact on our social and economic lives. I'm not defending the ofsted inspector but he has spoken to the people in schools who work with many children and families who experience school refusal, so he probably does know what he is talking about.
I work in a regular mainstream secondary school there is a limit on what we can do to accommodate students with ASD and mental health issues like anxiety, just as our country is struggling to provide effective services to adults with these conditions.
However I think many people who don't work in secondary schools would be surprised at how happy and peaceful they are. Mine certainly is most days. It's been my experience that the people who complain about schools and how we run things inside them have little or no first hand experience of them.

This is a really interesting point. When I tried a firm, old school approach to my daughter not wanting to go to school it was a disaster. She was there physically but pretty much shut down and wasn't learning anything. We ended up saying that we were going to trust her to manage it, that we knew she wanted to do well at school and would push through as much as she could. So if she really felt she couldn't manage it on a particular day we'd let her stay home. This has brought the most success for her. Yes her attendance is less than it should be but her grades are good and she's a lot happier in herself.

@Antsinmypantsneedtodance I think only a small minority of jobs and roles have that level of freedom, even these days. And you and DH had to work your way up to be sufficiently senior to have that, right? And have no customers expecting something to be open at a particular time?

Kids that are going to work in retail, and delivery, and warehouses, and education, and healthcare, also go to school.

Society is scruffier/less formal for sure.

Why WFH parents then and not SAHP parents too? Or shift working parents? Or self employed parents? Or company owning parents?

Also, unless secondary age/transport , someone is going out the door with those kids.