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?

What happens when they ask again and again.
DS’s school wanted me to attend a meeting to discuss DS’s 33% attendance
After 3 days of the school year. That was framed as a one off meeting.
When I was in the meeting it was made clear I would have to attend each week for 19 weeks or until DS’s attendance hit 98%
I would have to take 19 half days to attend these meetings . Pointed out I would lose my job. They ignored that comment
When I told them I didn’t have a job to go to so I was removing ds from their school to homeschool they were calling me, begging me not to take ds out of school. I pointed out that it wasn’t just the 19 half days that I was supposed to attend it was the reasons for DS getting 10 detention in a week for BS reasons . One was he walked down a corridor the wrong way, remembered and turned back to go the right way. Teacher standing watching the corridor gave him a detention.
Teacher was in the meeting and confirmed he had turned back but as he had watched him walk down the corridor that meant a detention.

Another was directly because he has a hearing issue and didn’t hear a teacher in his IT class saying to stop what they were doing and turn around. (She knew he has hearing issues and he was wearing headphones
He didn’t hear her and only when someone nudged him did he turn round.

They were all for things that were mistakes because he had only been there a few days or because of his disability.

They then cancelled the weekly appointments and his detentions. But by that time I didn’t have work and ds was too traumatised to go back.

I sent my bright bubbly child into the school education system and after a couple of weeks ended up with a severely depressed 11year old

One child was expelled for his none attendance because he was in hospital after being beaten up in the school playground
Boys who beat him up were still at the school.

This is the best response and what I’d do in this situation. They can see she’s had a lot of absences since that’s why they have a meeting, so just say you have already lost a significant amount of work time and money due to taking time off when she was ill so unfortunately can only attend an in person meeting outside of your working hours. Otherwise a virtual meeting will have to be the way it’s done. They will also be worried about absences due to ofsted as a low level of overall absence , if consistent and not improving can be something that brings an ofsted inspection forward, so it could be that they are trying to work through the children with the worst attendance to get those levels up so ofsted is kept at bay. Do you know how their weekly attendance looks? For the whole school? I’d argue if it’s lower this is something they are now pushing to try and bring it up. Low attendance will trigger involvement from the school though. When my daughter was off recently for 4 days with bacterial chest infection, they rang and said they would do a house visit just to check she’s there and ok etc. They said even seeing her through the window and waving would be sufficient. My partner does the school run and had her with him that week both at drop off and pick up so once we explained she would be on the premises morning and afternoon anyway they said that’s fine and didn’t need to do the home visit. It feels annoying and completely unnecessary for you, and that’s because it’s legitimate illness and if you sent her in no doubt they themselves would send her home. However, there are parents who are negligent and keeping their children off for so many reasons, like not having clean uniform or just plainly not being bothered. I’ve been in a school where I’ve voiced concerns around a child’s absences over and over again and in particular the pattern that follows. Could predict when they would next have a week off. The school still wouldn’t do anything but try and arrange an attendance meeting and when they failed to show nothing was done. So I’m glad these steps are in place here, purely as hopefully it means these children, like the child I taught, are supported and patterns of neglect are spotted early and safeguarding is done properly.

People are quoting ‘safeguarding’ when the only facts we have are that the OP has a child with lower than ideal attendance but has medical evidence for all absence and wants to engage with the school via phone. There is nothing to suggest safeguarding . Unfortunately schools are overzealous with attendance due to pressures from Ofsted and this is going to get worse with the new framework. Of course attendance matters but approaches like this do not help build relationships between parents and schools.
Safeguarding is an incredibly important part of schools responsibility which is why we should not dilute it and should be clear about when an issue is a safeguarding issue.

It’s ridiculous using averages in this way - two nasty bouts of illness will do it with the remaining weeks completely unscathed.

Having broken weeks - definitely something to be concerned about.

D&V could take you out a week easily with the 48 hour rule.

I think you will actually just raise more concerns by making such a fuss about meeting in person. If your child has been ill, as you say, and you have evidence, you have nothing to fear here.

OP you say you do drop off and pick up in person so can you not ask for the meeting then.
I think it’s very understandable in the circumstances not to be able to take further time off work but if you’re picking up anyway you’re not at work then.
it’s clear that “in person” is important to the school so in your position I’d agree that but insist on a timing that works for your job.

Your refusal to engage face to face is a red flag in of itself.

I’m a teacher and the fact you don’t want to go in gives me a concern. Go in, explain, thank them for worrying but there’s no need, they’ll offer support if you need it. If you don’t want to go in person I’d be worrying why ever not.

disagree as a working parent

If a school is pressuring people to get their attendance up that is a possible reason for the high infection level, the school needs to be looked at more closely, phone the school and tell them you have concerns about their infection control procedures and may need to raise a concern with the local authority, ask them to put their meeting request in writing as well with the reasons for the meeting clearly explained, see what they say.

Yes but OP says DD has had a lot more bouts than that.
"she’s had tonsillitis a few times and been very unwell , sinus infection, ear infection, D and V 3 times since September as well. She had chickenpox in November"
I'd totally expect school to ask to discuss that level and to ask questions about it

Sometimes it’s just about control.

School leadership gets rewarded / punished for attendance rates. That’s the govts exerting control over schools to meet targets. The school leadership, in turn, exert control over children and parents to achieve the targets set by the govt. Often the parents exert control over their children to appease the school to the point of forcibly handing a small child sobbing to school staff. What sort of love of learning do they believe this will inculcate?

The suggested threat to refer to SS is a step up in attempting to control the parents and make them do as they’re told. Institutional power dynamics. Often embraced by staff with high needs to control others. So predictable. Quite frequently unconnected to the child’s needs. Sometimes in opposition to the child’s needs. Rarely is the school’s conveyor belt learning environment acknowledged or the many more ways possible to educate a child discussed.

She doesn’t fear anything! She doesn’t want to have to take (more) time off work.

As a teacher, are you allowed to take time off for meeting when you have already had weeks off to look after your child? I know it wouldn’t go down well at my school, they are understanding to a point but this called easily be sorted in a phone call.

Does your child have a disability or chronic health condition @Insistingonit? What was her attendance level like in the previous years at school?

If she has a chronic health condition and medical evidence, then I agree that the school might be being heavy handed

If she has no disability or chronic health condition however I think the school does have a heightened safeguarding concern both if she has suddenly started to have a lot more time off than usual (why is that it and does it suggest an underlying issue which they aren’t aware of at home) or if she’s had a lot of time off every year (which might mean your threshold for keeping her off is lower than other families). Both of these conversations would be much much easier in person than via video call particularly if parents are prickly and prone to take offence easily.

They can ask away over the phone or on a video call!

Don't care what you think.

"I'd totally expect school to ask to discuss that level and to ask questions about it"

Wouldn"t that be a job for a medical professional?

But she has medical evidence. What exactly can be done?

I was illustrating that the average is unhelpful - not the specific pattern of OP’s child’s illnesses.

Schools pile on the pressure, parents send kids in sick, kids get more sick. Not rocket science.

Arrange a meeting 15/20 minutes before the school day or after school.

Exactly this.

When my kids were in primary school, missing work would have cost me £50 in lost wages which was my weekly budget for groceries back then. If id already been off caring for sick children I could not have afforded to miss anymore time off, and while my workplace were always understanding, there was a limit and they wouldn't be impressed at me attending a meeting at 11am (because the school always picked the time that suited them and it never tied in neatly with just getting out of work for half an hour) that could easily be done on the phone. It cost me much needed money and the good grace of my employer and my reputation as a reliable employee.

Surely as teachers themselves they know how hard it is to get out of work. My sister is a teacher and she simply cannot get out of work for love nor money. Maybe they should look at whether they would let their teaching staff out of work for a random hour in the middle of the day for an appointment that could be done on the phone!

This is all being investigated - stool sample, bloods taken etc….The op can’t tell the school any more than she knows herself.

Not the schools"s role to stick their nose into that, it is the role of a qualified doctor to examine the child and for the parents to inform the school if the child is infectious, or as a courtesy to inform them about other conditions if appropriate, the school should report to qualified social workers if they have genuine safe-guarding concerns not summon hard working parents to face the headmaster on some little power trip.

When my DD was at nursery and I worked in in-house PR and Communications, I frequently had to collect her because she had a temperature. I never sought permission, but said why I was leaving. Urgent tasks I asked colleagues to cover for me, others I caught up with at home after she went to bed. As a manager, I expected team members with children to do the same. I recognise that we were lucky to have such flexibility.

Oh my days, why ask if you are going to argue with everyone who agrees with the school??