Why would school refuse a call and insist on a meeting

[Insistingonit]

My dd is in year 5. Attendance hasn’t been good due to frequent illness. Once she got to 90% the school insisted on a GP appt to verify Illness each time which we did. We already supply the appt letters for appts in school time.

She is now at 88% . We have continued to provide proof of illness. They are insisting on speaking to us we agreed and said we will arrange a phone or video call. They said it has to be in person. Why? We are happy to discuss but don’t see the difference?

Yes because adults are renowned for sneezing into colleagues faces and not washing their hands.

My post didn’t mean I agree with the policy. If a kid is sick, they are sick, whether you think it’s normal or not it’s irrelevant. Other than ask the GP for blood tests (and if normal, what then?) and giving her vitamins and hope for the best, what else can she realistically do? Some kids simply are more poorly than others.

Honestly reading the comment you are responding to as well and some others makes me think that many of these posters either 1) have never had a child that needs significant time off school for illness or 2) they just don’t work.

I wouldn’t be happy to go against the school in this way and make an issue where there needn’t be one. You’d want to be pretty sure you and your child never need any flexibility or accommodation from them in the future.

They need flexibility now and school is unwilling.
Should parents have to go against their employer and lose all flexibility at work just to make some school staff happy by bending to unreasonable request

I wouldnt have thought anything strange about any of this. Just ill kid and school doing their best to stay on top.

The strange over the top concern and desperation not have a meeting is what would be strange to me looking from the outside -.as everyone relevant can only do.

No, that's not what compliance with the DfE should look like. Your school is doing it wrong. Attendance dropping below 90% is quite common in the autumn term, because maths. Each case should be looked at on an indvidual basis. It shouldn't be a blanket "below 90% and we call the EWO in".

Exactly. Heads do have some say in what compliance with DfE regulations look like.

Your school did a poor job. We look at individual reasons for each child's attendance. In the case of a child being seriously ill ( eg undergoing cancer treatment etc) we deliberately withhold any automatically generated letters and are mortified if there is an error which means one slips through and would always apologise to the parent.

Unfortunately most schools aren't like you and I am not alone in what we have experienced

Can't understand why you are investing so much time on this. Put a bit of out of hours work in instead of posting repeatedly and just go to the meeting. It's an odd reaction to a frustrating situation.

We only have the OP's word for anything that is posted on here.

That’s the whole point. She needs flexibility and accommodating now! Not just for this meeting, but in the way the school is dealing with a child that has actually been ill.

I’m sorry to say that you’re right. I’ve been in situations where I can see parents are worried sick as their young one is going through investigations. I tried to explain this to my line manager but sadly came to the conclusion that they didn’t care about families and children at all, just results and attendance figures. I 100% believe that regular school attendance and working hard in class is best for most children most of the time but there are always exceptions. I got told I had low expectations and lacked ambition for children in my care, that was the final straw. Schools - well academies - are toxic. You should have had medical needs tuition for your young one. I hope that they’re ok now . I’m sorry you’ve faced such worry. Heads don’t seem to appreciate how precious our children are.

This is my experience thankfully.

My son's school apply common sense to attendance issues and look at children individually and not as just a box ticking exercise.

My son's attendance is lower than OP's child due to medical reasons at consultant level including multiple appointments which can't be helped and I have never had an automated letter or requests for meetings.

Are you reading that the OP has had too much time off work due to their child’s ill health and is anticipating further absence due to forthcoming appointments? She’s not refusing the meeting for shits and giggles.

If the meeting was about care for her child the school wouldn’t have mandated unnecessary health appointments to obtain evidence the child had a fever. The idea that parents need to jump through every hoop because the school says so and be threatened with safeguarding if they won’t actually helps no one. Not the parent trying to care for their child, the school itself or parents who actually may need help but have been intimidated by the school.

Theres no reason why this can’t be covered in a phone conversation or online meeting. If the school does have a genuine safeguarding concern, duty of candour says the school should be upfront about this and tell the parent. The school see the parent at drop off and pick up, and at a recent parents evening. There is nothing to suggest there’s a parenting concern here and if there is, the school should be telling the parent clearly what their concern is and inviting her to a meeting to discuss this, not dressing it up as concern for explained, evidenced absence.

Psst.. in case you hadn't noticed.. this has been posted on the weekend.
I don't think the OP is at work, and nor is the school open today.

@JustGreenZebra Put a bit of out of hours work in instead of posting repeatedly and just go to the meeting.

How do you expect someone working in a factory on fixed shifts to just put a bit of out of hours work in? Sheesh - your middle class privilege is showing!

There are not many workplaces where an adult is constantly able to wash their hands every time they sneeze, blow their nose, touch a door handle, use the shared kettle in the staffroom etc, no. Many people use shared equipment. Sometimes when you have a cold you can't always stop serving people. Unless we go back to wearing masks and insisting that people work from home when ill then passing on viral infections is inevitable in normal life.

Yes, as I work in a primary school I'm fully aware that small children are vectors for transmission. I've had COVID about 6 times and I do think working with children is a factor. But if I had the type of health which meant I was likely to be hospitalised every time I had a chance of catching a cold, then perhaps I would be looking for a job that isn't working with small children.

And actually the people harping on about "presenteeism" and preferring the idea that children should just stay home for every sniffle or sore throat, I assume you would be happy with your child's teacher being taught by multiple supply teachers through the year? Because if your argument is that people must stay away from school if they have a cold just in case someone else catches it and it results in a more serious infeciton, then that should also apply to staff. Are you happy to come into school and cook all the dinners if all the catering staff have a cold?

Don't people realise how often teachers and TAs drag themselves into school when they are ill? Because good supply staff are often hard to come by.

News flash, we don’t all have office jobs

I’m glad to hear it. My school did as you said for a child with cancer - and rightly so. But cancer is well known, when it was a child with horrendous endometriosis and I tried to advocate for them, I got told we couldn’t authorise absences for periods! Even though we had a letter from GP and hospital was investigating. Some heads are so empowered and arrogant they think they can override doctors!

Yes, maybe this is it. Maybe in large academy trusts there is just not enough personal knowledge of each family. There is a danger of them turning into more corporate environments, becoming depersonalised. Maybe the staff in the office know the families better but if you have a more corporate, distant head who won't listen to staff lower down and is only interested in pushing through strict policies with no concern for individual cases then parents will quickly demonstrate their lack of support for such policies.

I think my own school is generally quite good on how we deal with attendance issues. We aren't perfect but do our best. But I totally disagree with the insistence from the head that he must give parents a meeting date and time and he expects parents just to be there. Life doesn't work like that. It isn't a summons. It's supposed to be parents and schools "working together to improve attendance". I don't call refusing to establish a time convenient for both parties to attend "working together". It also doesn't work to weed out those who refuse to engage with the school AT ALL, which are REALLY the ones you want to focus on.

Well , the string of supplies thing is already happening up and down the country.

As for dragging myself in, yes I do. Primarily because I’m an idiot. Also because, as an adult, I can manage my symptoms, I can take various meds safely, and muddle through. No one is suggesting staying home for a sniffle, but a 4 yo that is miserable and tired and just wants mum/dad isn’t going to be learning much anyway. If anything, they’ll take more attention from the other children , as they’ll need monitoring, comforting, cajoling, temp checks and then the inevitable call home.

But that's a sick child you're describing. Not one with a sniffle.