To think there is far to much emphasis on school attendance

[Starwisher]

My dd1 is in year 1. I got a letter telling me off the other day as her attendance has only been 92% when it should be 95% to date. Apparently the educational welfare officer will be keeping a close eye on us...

For goodness sake, dd has been ill! They know this, yet I still get the letter.

Im sick of parents smugly telling me how they just "bung a bit of calpol in the kid and chuck them in school" so they dont need to miss out on the gym or shopping.

They are the one's getting everyone else ill and causing more problems so they can avoid a sick child, yet get rewarded with attendance certificates.

I try and do the right thing and stop dd spreading bugs and getting better at home- and get in trouble.

What is with OFSTED threatening to drop a schools rating if attendance is below some target figure? What if a particular nasty bug is doing the rounds- why should a school be penalised? (Another reason why OFSTED means nothing)

Im not saying attendance is not important but its becoming ridiculous!

that's not a direct correlation though is it? the non attendance could be merely the symptom of the REAL issue that causes the lower grade re: being ill! for example, or parents getting a messy divorce or have a nasty piece of work boyfriend of ten years senior or getting battered by step dad etc etc etc.

you can't say non attendance causes the low grade without examining other factors and the causes of the low attendance.

Flisspaps - that's good to know about the codes.

The research may show this, but I'm interested in what parents here think. I personally believe being relaxed about taking a day or 2 days off (not 10 of course) when you have a bad bug is better than 99-100% attendance. You go back refreshed and ready to learn, and not in a haze of fatigue for a week.

Heswall - oh dear, 3 years, that's dire! Did anyone make an official complaint?!!

also poor socio-economic background with no belief in value of education will lead to higher chance of poor economic background AND lower attendance. compare the child who is having time off because her parents couldn't give a toss about school and have raised her telling her it's pointless and the child who has had the same amount of time off but due to illness and hospital time but is highly motivated and works independently whilst in hospital and is bright and able.

you're being a bit daft with your suggestions of 'evidence'.

you can't say a causes b without having a control group for whom everything is the same except for factor a. therefore you can say low attendance and poorer grades seem to correlate but you cannot say the former causes the latter.

eg. a brain injury would cause poor attendance and decreased grades. which caused the poor grade the low attendance or the brain injury that screwed up higher level brain functioning?

Nicely put saf

That's so true, saf - I know many kids with congenital heart disease who are in hospital for at least one third of the entire year (that's a lot more absence than just 8%!!) with infection or recovering after essential major operations, who, at A level age, have amassed many high GCSE grades each who are now studying and completing their A level coursework in between pills, injections and blood tests in their hospital beds, all predicted good grades and ready to apply for university. One might argue that "they're exceptional" but the point is that presenteeism at school no more guarantees greater productivity than it does at the workplace. I think pupils should learn the value of turning up to show their commitment and because on the whole, school has some fun stuff to look forward to and in fact the school term is not very long compared to the whole year. But it's one thing to be committed to going, and another thing to make a fetish/obsession out of being there everyday no matter what.

I think school attendance can be dealt with by HT effectively, with the most extreme cases being referred to the EWO. The problem with the current system is that parents with DCs with SN are being heavily targeted.

DS had SN attendance of 60% in year 1 and we had a letter from the EWO. I rang to explain that my DS had been in hospital when not in school, due to a serious medical condition, which the school were aware of. The response I received was ' if his attendance continues at this level I will be taking you to court'. Surely this is not helpful to any parties in the matter and just making a point?

Incidentally, DH sent them a letter containing the Act that allows them to pursue legal action and then stated that DS's condition was the only valid defence for this offence and that if the EWO continued to push the matter we would happily go to court and put in a claim for costs of time spent dealing with this matter. Funnily enough I've never heard from them since....

nope because he will have been some bully boy getting off on his big fish in a little pond world and forgetting that reality and the whole big world is out there and not everyone is a small child.

Speaking as someone with a chronically ill child I do think it would make her chances in life better if people did not constantly repeat in her hearing that x% of absences (always a far lower rate than her own) will result in x no of grades dropped. Could there be a better way of making a child give up? Fortunately, dd didn't listen and carries on working and getting high grades. But if she had trusted her former HT she would have packed in and accepted that her chances were ruined.

What people do need to remember is:

A) a correlation is a statistic, it refers to a large population, it does not mean that any one individual cannot do something different with their lives

(statistically, Barack Obama's chances of becoming president of the US were virtually nil- doesn't mean it couldn't happen, it evidently could)

B) if you are ill, then knowing that being ill affects your life chances won't change the fact that you are ill (except that the stress can make you worse)

C) statistics can be a clumsy tool and, as swallowed reminds us, do not necessarily take into account the existence of very different subgroups within a larger group. It's like the discussion of whether not being married is relate to greater risk of splitting up: the answer is that it is if you look at the group of unmarried couples as a whole, but if you look at different subgroups they are not all the same: the couple who didn't marry because they weren't too sure of their commitment will be different from the highly committed couple who didn't because of some kind of principle, and the existence of the first couple won't affect the second couple.

The problem with the current undifferentiated system is that it is so closely tied up with the school's success in the league table and for that success it makes no difference if the child is highly ambitious and does 8 hours of study in bed every day. Headteachers have no incentive to show empathy with children with unavoidable conditions. Of course a highly principled and empathetic headteacher will do so anyway, for the sake of the children- but not all headteachers are highly principled.

What I like about working at a university is that there is a system in place that forces us to be considerate quite regardless of our own personal principles. And the system in turn creates a culture, it affects how people speak about other people and their misfortunes.

Cory it sounds like your daughter will be just fine with you as her champion. You sound very strong and sure. Hang in there

reindeer!!! i can't believe an EWO said that, THAT's the exact thing i was talking about.

shameful.

reindeer, I can well believe it. What dd's headteacher said was "yes, of course we accept that corydd is ill, but you can't expect us to be happy about it"

as if his disapproval would make all the difference to the medical facts

cory as a Mum of a DD with a chronic health condition that can affect her attendance, I am both shocked & feel for you & your DD thats how the School behave, thank God you are tough enough to deal with it, but you shouldn't have to at all -

I get p'd off with the generic letters, but I cannot fault the way its been handled by DDs head & School in general & if they spot it, the automated letters are stopped, they just don't always spot it, but I've learned not to take it seriously, but the first few I got made me both cross & very worried, hence why I took to responding to the EWO with a very snotty tone, jut incase - I know my own DDs health problems - mine too for that matter, would be aggravated by that sort of stress you describe, so I am outraged that any School can behave like that in front of your DD

Wow this thread has taken off! I read someone had said, sorry I don't know who, if you find attendance letters stressful how do you cope with the rest of life....to that I would like to say....if you have a chronically ill child, who is in and out of hospital, for whom you as a parent have to fight for the correct nhs support, sen support, statements, tribunals etc etc etc (as all aprents of chronically ill children have to do, a threatening letter mentioning legal action could well and truely put you over the edge, and I would love to hear from any parent who thinks they can care full time for the sn child, take care of any other dc, possibly work and fight all the battles needed to meet child's medical care and sometimes not get stressed by the little things.....personally I broke down in tears to the vacuum cleaner repair man, because he couldn't come for three days in my defence I had one dc with heart problem, one criticially ill in hospital, my dh had a nervous breakdown, I was caring for my niece as her mum was in an institution, as well as my three dc, had little to no money and my FIL dx with cancer.....thankfully my dc school knew that ds was in hospital as seriously ill and obviously got that message across to the EWO....if I had got a threatening letter at this point I might have been a tad stressed!

The whole point of the initial post was whether schools and the way the education system and ofsted has been set up to stress attendance loses the sentivity and importance of the individual.

Well, you know they say there are "lies, damned lies, and statistics". No disrespect to statisticians of course, who have done admirable work for me in the past taking numbers and doing the boring tasks to sort them out. It's just that studies are not the be all and end all.

I'm sure if we were visited by aliens they would think it is really bizarre that people are making parents agonise over one day or more taken to recover from the flu or a bout of food poisoning (I'd love to ask at this point if being quarantined by the school- eg diarrhoea, chicken pox, rubella - is counted as not achieving 100% attendance too, but ...yawn...). They'll say, but you can clearly see those who are truanting or being kept back by parents - look! They're the ones spraying rude words on walls or messing about in the park on a school day!

It's simple, Sparkle - those who say "how will you cope with life" have never been on the receiving end of a threatening letter for something affecting their DCs that they haven't done.

Kipper....that is probably true, well here's hoping they never have to find out the hard way.