To be annoyed at attendance letters from school

[PumpkinPiloter]

We have just received another letter from school about DS1 attendance.

The letter states that as his attendance has dropped since the last letter we need to make an appointment with the head teacher or be referred to the Education Welfare Service.

DS1 suffers from bouts of tonsillitis so does have a fair few absences we would also rather keep him home when he is poorly and try to make the best judgement call we can.

The last period they have judged him on was the 2 weeks before the school broke up for Christmas so even though he had 2 days off this has led to an 87% attendance rate.

We both feel that if other parents were more diligent about keeping their children at home when they were poorly our son would not catch as many bugs.

For background DS1 is in primary and is in the top few of the class across all subjects for attainment and effort. DD2 has had 1 day off sick since the start of the school year in September as she just does not catch as many bugs/suffer from tonsillitis like her brother.

It grates me the way that it seems that laws seem to be drawn up for the few percent of the population that do not parent effectively as opposed to the vast majority of parents who do.

I understand to a certain extent that this is a tick boxing exercise from the school but can they are fully aware of his health issues and that he works hard and is way above the national average for attainment.

Surely in a sane world some discretion should be used when sending out threatening letters and wasting everyone's time.

We got an attendance letter from DS school. The first time because we were following school policy and not returning after an episode of vomiting and diarrhoea because 48 hours hadn't elapsed.
The second time he had what turned out to be an ear infection. It took 3 trips to the doctors to get a diagnosis and required a follow up appointment. We took medical advice and kept him home.
I followed protocol and rang the school; wrote an explanatory letter enclosing appointment cards and they still sent me a letter demanding my attendance on a given date and if I didn't attend then the meeting would take place in my absence.

I was angered by its tone. I am a working parent and I don't take the decision to use parental leave lightly.
The system is such that the percentage absence is based on the number of days sickness as a proportion of the number of days of term that have elapsed and not as a proportion of the total school year. (6 days from 35 possible school days will give a lower percentage than 6 days from 180 school days)

@pumpkinpiloter no ive never heard of it! Will defo give it a try though, its so awful to see when one kicks off, he has a immigran nasal spray that he takes when one kicks off but once it starts thats the whole day written off, he just has to stay in bed and actually cries if he gets up. Poor thing :(

I don't think people should just accept bullying and threats from theor dc's schools. If you have notified them that your child has tonsilitis then the school should not treat you like a criminal. I am sure that head teachers have sufficient awareness to know that some kids have long term genuine illnesses and should act accordingly.

There is no way I'd accept this. School eould get a stinking letter from me. Harrassing parents of sick children should not be tolerated.

When was it suddenly up to the schools to identify all these things?

Every member of staff in a school has a legal duty wrt safeguarding.

It is not our job to identify what the issue is, but it is our job to identify that there is an issue, and join any dots that we have (in a primary, one often knows e.g. which parent has the child which night of the week, for example).

So identifying that a child has a pattern of absence on Thursdays, say, and putting that together with the fact that it is the non-resident parent who collects them on Wednesday night, and also that on every other Monday they come into school in the same (dirty) uniform as they left on Friday, but that on the other weekends all is fine - it's not identification of anything, but it is a pattern that might warrant us passing the information on to safeguarding lead and then up the chain if needed, when it might then be investigated by someone who CAN identify what is going on.

bullying and threats

Is it REALLY bullying and threats? Is a request for a meeting with the head really a THREAT, long after you have left school? And EWOs aren't ogres.

I would also reserve some anger not for schools, but for those parents who DO ring in sick when taking their child on holiday.

If we could trust every parent of every child to report sickness accurately, and never to claim holiday as sickness, then that would mean that no letter to any parent might ever need to be worded with that possibility in mind.

Yes it is bullying and threats if they won't negotiate mutually convenient times for parents to attend meetings, hold threats of legal action over parents' heads when they know that a child has a genuine and long term health issue.

We have rates of 70,75 and 82% for our dc that are at school. Dd 1s was at 40% just before we started home schooling.

We just get Drs letters for everything we can, up to date consultants letters for long term stuff and just try our best to get them in when we can. Luckily socially they have loads of friends and academically are doing well and the school cutrentkynare very understanding.
Would your gp write letters or a genera one explaining your dc is prone to infections ?

IWanna,

Does the OP mention not negotiating convenient times?

I'm sorry if I missed that in their later postings. I think mutually convenient times within a sensible timeframe (e.g. offering appointment slots over a fortnight or so, including reasonable 'early evening' times) would be an entirely fair expectation on both sides.

I also think that there is a difference between a 'generic' and a 'specific' letter. So if an identical 'generic' letter is sent to all, which sets out the need for a meeting and information about the normal escalation procedure should the meeting not happen - then that is reasonable. However, if it is a very specific letter 'We know that X has been ill, but even so, we will bring legal action', then that is threatening.

It is like a car park sign which says 'If you park outside the marked bays, you will be liable to a fine of X, and legal action if that is not paid within Y days'. that isn't threatening, it is simply informative.

However, if someone sticks a large notice to your car, when your tyre is 1 mm out of the marked bays, clearly due to the presence of a huge car next door, saying 'You WILL be taken to court because you have parked badly', then that is threatening.

Haven't read the whole thing but the attendance thing in schools drives me nuts. The cases where parents are deliberately letting their kids miss school is tiny compared to the number who are doing their best and making a judgement on how ill their child is. It's like using a sledgehammer to do a sculpture.

Also in answer to the person who said about colds, it depends, if your child is feeling really unwell then a cold may be a valid reason to be off. Before Christmas my 9 year old was desperate to be in school for all the end of term treats. She had constant headaches, coughing sneezing, dizziness and was very weak and limp. Doctor confirmed it was 'only' a virus. When I sent her into school she was sent home because too weak and tired. Few people keep their children off 'with the slightest sniffle' not least because it's generally really inconvenient to have a sick child at home.. If anything most people send kids in when it is debatable whether they are well enough or not. This is how the bugs get spread round the whole school.

Cant the thing about the meeting was another poster who said the school would hold the meeting without her if she didn't attend. There was no recognition that as a working parent, she can't just take of time when the school dictates. They could have gone about that entirely differently and got the same result without being combative and threatening to the parent.

Schools want cooperation from parents and support - it would help if they didn't treat all parents like liars. Especially whrn they know a child is ill because it's been documented in their file already.

They could have gone about that entirely differently and got the same result without being combative and threatening to the parent.

Absolutely. I would defend the principle that schools can and should hold meetings with parents about attendance - but not defend the way some schools are going about it!

As I have said above, it is hard to find a tone for 'generic' letters (ie those sent to ALL parents whose children fall within specific bounds of attendance, which MUST be identical to ensure fairness and lack of discrimination) that is sufficiently firm / businesslike to gain the attention of those families who genuinely might be of concern, while not seeming unduly harsh to the majority of parents where the absence, when investigated, is not of concern over and above the unavoidable missing days of education.

The cases where parents are deliberately letting their kids miss school is tiny compared to the number who are doing their best

The thing is, to a single family and their acquaintances it may seem a tiny - insignificant, even zero - number.

At the level of a school of any size, it is a small, but persistent, number and almost never zero: most often because of holidays, perhaps, but also because of very different thresholds for what counts as 'illness' (many reasons for this, including mental health issues in parents, different cultural expectations, different levels of engagement with school), with the really serious safeguarding issues being a tiny number but, at a school level, especially over a number of years, again non-zero.

A good school's concern is the welfare of its children - and while this does mean allowing them to take time off to get better from illness, it does also mean bearing in mind that there CAN be other reasons for absence which can be harmful for children, which we need to be alert to, but not in a way that seems over-zealous and overbearing to the vast majority of parents....It's hard.

When was it suddenly up to the schools to identify all these things

You ever heard of Victoria Climbie? Baby P?

Now go and think about it.

The states anything under 90% must be referred to EWO - this is partly because serious case reviews (such as into poor Victoria Climbe’s death) highlighted that attendance at school helps keep children safe...

www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2

This sets out the statutory - ie legally required - guidance for schools and colleges on safeguarding children. As Hope says, it is cases such as Victoria Climbie and Baby P that have led to wider remits and greater accountability for school staff wrt safeguarding.

There were so many causes for concern that were ignored, leading to those awful cases, by all sorts of professionals who should have known better.
No one thinks that schools shouldn't enquire when attendance dips. But there are ways and means, politely for a start is always good and not from a position that treats parents as enemies who are all lying to the school. Most parents who are not making it up when they tell the school their dc are sick.
I've seen threads where parents have bern in the hospital with their very ill dc and are fielding calls from school about attendance. This is not on. Especially when they have been informed that a child has a long term illness. How can we trust schools to meet the needs of individual dc when so many struggle to write a basic polite letter?

IWanna,

So you would like:

• the school to write a basic polite letter to those parents who believe that there isn't a problem [note - where the PARENTS believe there isn't a problem doesn't mean that the SCHOOL knows this] BUT

• that if there is a problem, then of course a non-basic, firm letter is fine?

I am NOT condoning attendance calls for children who are in hospital. as that is crass and should be avoided. However, for many other cases, the school doesn't know where there might really be a problem - and even if they 'guessed / used common sense', it is almost certain that some conscious or unconscious bias could come into play. (X's absence must be fine - they're a really nice family, they wouldn't do anything like that, it must be genuine illness every time. Y might be more of an issue though, they're a bit scruffy, let's send them a firm letter just in case).

So schools send a standard letter to everyone - which probably usually falls between the devil and the deep blue sea,. in being too firm for most people and not firm enough for some - and then rely on meetings as the next step.

I think the other question has to be - what is it worth to avoid a young child being abused?

Is it worth a large number of imperfectly-polite letters, and a number of somewhat-inconvenient meetings? Or is it not worth it, because the numbers of such cases are small?

Should we see it as OK that another case might slip through the net because that would make life a little bit nicer and a bit more convenient for everyone else?

It is really hard to find the balance - but if you do get a letter that is imperfectly worded, and have to sit through a meeting where everyone agrees that the absence is OK, and that no referral to an EWO is needed, is that worth it just to make it just a bit more likely that an abused child will be detected?

What was his attendance before the last two weeks of term? If it was not excellent (and you said you had received letters about it before), then yes, the letter can be based on a two week period (normally you would be informed of this though). Some children are very sickly/come down with everything, but 90% attendance is still one day off a fortnight by the end of the autumn term, 80% is a day a week; most people would raise an eyebrow if that were a work colleague. As a school, you would expect a child who is genuinely that ill would have seen their doctor several times. An appointment card is evidence of this. You can give permission for school to speak to the GP.
Regardless of the reason for absence, absence is absence and strategies/support need to be put in place for the child to receive their education. An average of 80% attendance over the course of a child's education and they may as well have not bothered turning up for two and a bit complete school years. It is not unusual for a child to have a bad year where they catch everything under the sun, but they make it up the rest of the time. But some children do have shocking attendance throughout, some through nobody's fault (genuine illness/medical needs gor example) some through 'stay at home with me/ school isn't important' attitude, some through 'he was a bit sniffly/there are high winds today /we got back very late so he stayed in bed' The latter two categories are the most dangerous, as if ignored you are averaging that 80% quite quickly. Schools have a responsibility to support the children in their care and are held accountable for it.
From what you have said, I am sure the school will be fine, but they still have that responsibility.
Hope that makes sense!

Oh and quite often for the parents who don't care about their children's education (and yes they do exist) the letter threatening legal action and fines is the only thing that makes them get in touch. I have done lots of phoning/writing/emailing/hammering in doors with no response until that letter lands on their doormat.

My friends dd who is in the same class as my dd (they’re 6 and 7) got chicken pox. She was sent home by the school as the teacher saw said spots when they were changing for PE. She had about 10 school days off and my friend got one of those letters. She met with the head and said you know she had chicken pox and that’s why she was off. It was the teacher that sent her home! The head just said it was protocol they had to follow for everyone regardless when it’s unauthorised. Even though the school knew because they sent her home the absence wasn’t authorised by a gp so therefore had to be documented as unauthorised. The meeting with the head is basically them ticking a box to say they spoke to you about it

I had a letters for 2 of my doc last term, one in secondary, one in primary. They seemed to get endless bugs that reunited in vomiting and fever and couldn't even leave their beds. The bugs just got passed around. Better for a week or so, back in school then really poorly again.
I phoned both schools and they apologised to me but said they had to send these letters out.
What would the powers that be like parents to do about illness? I would love to have an instant illness cure. Perhaps I should carry my vomiting and delirious dc into school so everyone can catch their bugs, then that would pull attendance down even more. Or perhaps I could take them into the local lea and ask the boss what they think whilst the child vomits over their desk?

I think the other question has to be - what is it worth to avoid a young child being abused? Is it worth a large number of imperfectly-polite letters, and a number of somewhat-inconvenient meetings? Or is it not worth it, because the numbers of such cases are small?

The point is: is there evidence that all this increased expenditure and time, including funding posts for home-school liaison officers, welfare offices and so on is preventing child abuse? Or is the deluge of trivial cases making it impossible to detect the serious ones?

Parents who fear detection may simply deregister and home school. This is not illegal.

We don't know, that's the point. Poor school attendance may be a risk marker for abuse, but it's also a risk marker for ill health, genetic issues, accidents- unless it can be shown that intervening spots or prevents abuse, then it isn't necessarily an effective way of spending government money by devising a bureaucratic system that catches lots and lots of minor offenders and has to spend time processing them but can't spot the major ones. It's not a good system if it can't discriminate. These things are implemented without being properly tested or evaluated so we don't know if they are actually effective.

And, other things get cut- so as I say, my daughter's secondary has no counsellors. They might have been far more likely to have heard and being able to intervene in social, emotional and abusive situations, but there aren't any, nor school nurses any more who used to be another group that were a soft entrance into noticing abuse in routine health checks.