My DS's secondary school insists that every time any child is off sick, they go to the doctor in order to get a sick note, to prove that they aren't truanting. They say that it's the local education authority who insist on this policy.
Now I do understand that there is a truancy problem. I do understand that some parents are irresponsible and uncooperative and enable their children's truancy by writing notes pretending they were ill and not ensuring they go to school.
But really? Every single child (outside of an academy or private) in a local area, should use up valuable GP time, for every cough and cold bad enough to keep them off school?
My DS probably gets one or two colds a year and needs to stay off school for one or 2 days, but some kids are ill much more often than that and the idea that every single one of them should go along to the GP surgery and clog up all those valuable appointments when all they need is bed rest, paracetamol and hydration, in order to tackle truancy, strikes me as a really irresponsible use of NHS resources.
Surely any decent school, does enough proper liaison with pupils and parents, to know which ones might be swinging the lead? Surely they could have a system where only specific pupils are required to bring in medical notes, when their absence goes above a certain point, for example and there's a suspicion that their parent might be facilitating truancy?
I am thinking of writing a letter of complaint to the LEA because I honestly think that this is a really wrong-headed approach to truancy; I understand that it has to be tackled, but not at the expense of valuable GP appointments. But I just want to get the Mumsnet view of this, in case there are things I haven't taken into account.