To think the term School 'REFUSAL' should be banned?

[taratill]

I think it is a terrible term to use for a child who is unable to attend school and is an excuse for schools, LEA's the government to blame mental health problems / anxiety problems in school on the child.

I have first hand experience of this and had a child who was classed a school 'refuser' as a result of the fact that he had massive anxiety/ undiagnosed ASD and was unable to attend for a period of 6 months last year. Rather than give him support, in the first instance, when he started to get anxious and not want to go he was branded as naughty and defiant and quite ridiculously threatened with exclusion because he was scared to go into the class room. His anxiety wasn't addressed and he started to threaten to self harm and was eventually deemed until to go to school by mental health workers.

Happily now we have got to the root of the anxieties and have a good new school he has gone back but needs a number of interventions in the classroom/ school environment to cope. If he had had these and school had listened in the first place he may never have had to have time off, sigh!

I've read on a post today some quite judgemental comments about 'school refusal' and think the term itself is so damaging as the implication is that it is the child or the parents fault.

Just really winds me up, that's all.

Absolutely agree that schools can and should take into account factors that they can control.
I agree e.g. where the issue is something like bullying
If a child is too scared to go to school because it is too noisy on the dinner hall = provide a separate area for the child to eat
That would be a reasonable adjustment which should be made, but the school cannot control the underlying issue.

I understand your point taratill

School are being pretty good at the moment and dd is attending as much school as she can

But i would be angry to be fined or get a letter calling her a school refuser even if there is no judgement intended

But all too often schools don't make the reasonable adjustments which might prevent school refusal.

Would it be called "school refusal" if a child who needed to use a wheelchair couldn't physically access the building because there are no ramps?

Sorry, I haven't read the whole thread. I'm an EP and use the term ' extended school non-attendance'. School refusal is a wholly unhelpful term for obvious reasons.

I've worked with lots of young people who have been through extended school non-attendance' and it has always been due to a complex interaction of factors, often related to systemic issues in the school ( sometimes family too ) environment. It's never just ' within child'.

School refusal as a term, and subsequently as a concept, fails to describe the experience appropriately.

BoogleMcGroogle
I could get on board with 'extended school non-attendance'. It meets my personal requirement of being an appropriate umbrella term without commenting on why.

Too many of the suggestions on here have been too focused (in my opinion) of explaining the absence or reason for refusal.

Yes i definitely think thats a better term boogle

boogle that’s a better term but ‘extended’ doesn’t cover the early days of the child struggling to attend which is when the school needs to be the most understanding.

maisy reasonable adjustments will only be made if there is a recognised disability. When my DS first started to struggle it was the sound of the teachers voice he complained about. Rather than being listened to it was assumed he was making excuses and being defiant (probably because at that point he had no diagnosis)

And why do you object to the reason for absence being defined , surely that’s extemely relevant to how schools /lea handle the absence!

OP, with the best will in the world, the early days are absence like any other absence.

A student wouldn't be classed as a school refuser at that point.

We can't just start saying 'parent says they're struggling to get in' so we'll class this 2 day absence as different from anothrr parent whose child is off yet again for 2 days.

I'm not saying things can't be done to support in that time but I don't think you're seeing the whole picture of a school responsible for over 1000 pupils and keeping an eye on attendance, persistent absenteeism (phrase used in lots of schools to refer to children who are off a lot for all reasons), monitoring school refusals over extended time frames, support etc.

There is a massive issue of taking at face value 'child is off because we can't get them in' and categorising it and treating it as emotional/anxiety/mental health, mainly because it is so open to abuse (and that's what I've encountered as a justification for children missing school due to factors involving abuse in the household).

It's a challenging range of situations which are often so deeply personal but require schools and LAs to be able to monitor and track thousands of children at once.

My DS was at a school of less than 200 pupils! You are a teacher I think you are only seeing it from your point of view just as much as you are accusing me of only seeing it from mine.

I dragged my child into school against his will and he had ‘silent meltdowns’ it was pretty bloody obvious something was wrong

Cross post OP

I object to having millions of categories because it doesn't work when you start adding in scale.

I think what you are missing is that schools ajd LAs are responsible for thousands of children.
We can't have:
Child a - persistent absenteeism due to socual and emotional issues
Child b - peristent absentee due to anxiety
Child c - persistent absentee due to depression
Etc.
Because then in school B there's a child with anxiety but that's triggered by issues at home so wr need a label for that, thrn another code for child J because their reason is anger and attachment issues due to having over 20 care placements by thr age of 13.

It just doesn't work.

All those reasons may be true, but across a school / LA how do you begin looking at offering servuces when you have zillions of different categories with some kids hitting multiple?

The umbrella term has bugger all to do with what steps the school/LA/multiagency partners take to address the issue.

It is school refusal / extended school non-attendance/ other appropriate umbrella term.

Not asking for ‘millions of categories’ just one than doesn’t lay blame on child/parent

Maybe school refusal with cause/ school refusal wilful

taratill
I've shares lots on this thread from what parents have said when i've worked with them through some of these issues.

I'm not doubting the system is poor.

What i am saying is that trying to argue that one umbrella term (school refuser) is awful and saying pretty much any other umbrella tern is also awful misses why these terms exist. They are umbrella terms.

A child on my register can have a SEND code. All that does is say they have a SEND need. I cannit make any assumption about the nature of the need or what support the child needs because they have a SEND code.
I could choose ti be supportive. I could choose to be a crap excuse of a teacher and watch them flounder. But the fact that they have a SEND code as an umbrella is separate to my actions.

A child has a SEND code so I look at their statements, talk with home, key workers etc and act accordingly.

Samr for school refusal/other umbrella term.

Just so I understand where you are coming from are you saying that school refusal should or should not be coded in a way that levies attendance fines?

Or do you think there could be differentiation so families trying their best are not fined?

Not asking for ‘millions of categories’ just one than doesn’t lay blame on child/parent
Except school refusal doesn't do that.
It is a statement of fact.

And boogle has offered a great alternative which doesn't havr the same potential connotations and there's a problem with that too.

There is no need to have reasons in an umbrella term. Otherwise it's not an umbrella term.

Maisypops what is your view on a child with diagnosed autism and diagnosed sensory processing disorder being expected to do Young Voices - a choir of five thousand, in front of an audience of fifteen thousand, on a brightly lit stage at the National Arena? Would it be a reasonable adjustment to allow them not to do that?

DS's head thought not. She thought it would, "build resilience". Hence the paed's comment about removing a wheelchair etc.

Not all schools have even the most basic grasp of ASD at a senior management level. And without it, you can't have reasonable adjustments. Because they will try to apply Dweck (or their understanding of Dweck in fairness to the poor woman) when they should be applying Attwood.

I think that early days absence had to be treated intially like any other absence because of a number of reasons.

However, when there is an issue of school refusal and parents are engaging with school and(usually) mutliagency teams then I think it should be treated the way my school (and other previous schools) have done it.

1. Absenteeism is an issue. There is no avoiding that.
2. There is an issue leading to school refusal
3. Work should be provided to be completed at home to ensure the child is getting an education, albeit a reduced one
4. Flexibility and adaptions may be needed to get thr child into school e.g. access to a mentor/ safe place / reduced timetable etc
5. Other agencies should be working with the child and family to address the root causes where thry are linked to mental health or home situations
6. Where thr trigger is school based then long term adaptations may be needed in school e.g. reduced curriculum/ longer temr access to pastoral support etc.

You haven’t asked my question, should parents trying their best be fined?

perfectstorm
What you describe is a shitty situation.

Let me be really clear (and I've said this lots on this thread), schools don't get it right all the time and the system in my opinion makes it bloody diffixult for families to get the support they need.

I don't think arguing over umbrella terms achieves anything.

Bear in mind that fining will happen before many of the interventions you mention can take place (especially if school is treating absence as behavioural because it’s refusal) which does happen