To be bloody pissed off that school are annoyed that my son can't breathe?

[Mrsweasleysclock]

DS suffers from asthma. It has been a struggle to get it under control and this time of year always comes with a flare up. He has been breathless and coughing with chest tightness for a week now, hasn't been in school in this time. We've had to take him to the hospital twice, once by ambulance as he couldn't catch his breath for an hour so called 999. I have kept in touch with the school everyday giving them updates.

This morning I get a letter about his poor attendance and threatening further action if his attendance doesn't improve.

I am fuming. I understand they have attendance standards to keep but surely if you were concerned you could have had a chat with me any time when I was in dropping/collecting DD. Or even act like you care about his health rather than making it seem like I just haven't bloody bothered to bring him to school.

So mumsnet, talk me down because I feel like going to war over this with the school.

Yabu: the school have procedures to follow

Yanbu: they could have discussed his health/attendance informally first before going down the formal route of sending a letter threatening action.

This. However, the absences need to be verified. Can you take medical evidence to show what is happening? The EWO will also be checking absences and pressure from the local authority menas schools have to take a no tolerance approach. It is hard to not take it personally but for your own well being, don't.

Schools have a duty to inform you of the attendance of your child. They also have a duty to enquire if the attendance is low due to safeguarding - obviously not the case here.
There is also the case of some parents don’t do what the OP is doing, but keep children off when they could go to school. Having the sniffles is not the same as severe asthma, of course, but unless medical notes are given then you can’t judge the severity of the situation.
Complaints often come from parents whose children are behind or do not achieve gcse grades due to absence. So parents have to be told how many lessons they’ve missed.
letters should be informative though not rude or accusatory.

Mine had an illness that required months off school. The school had to send us these letters but were really kind and apologetic when explaining they are duty bound at County level to send them, otherwise they get sanctioned and fined. It can also make a school lose its Ofsted status. Ignore them but do talk with the school about Care Plans in case an attack happens at school.

YANBU. They are!

There are processes that schools have to go through for safeguarding and letters will go out one attendance falls to a specific percentage. This is to protect vulnerable children. If the education welfare officer come round to see you, don't worry, your child has legitimate reasons for the absence, but the ewo can enable you to get more support for your child, like home tuition when your child is too ill to go into school. It's a process and could be supportive for you. I used to work for a local authority supporting children out of school for medical reasons.

Solidarity here from a fellow asthma-mum! My son had a total of 3 days off for actual illness last school year, and then 6 days off for covid (3 when he actually had covid but wasn't ill despite having very severe asthma, and 3 while he waited for results of the then required PCR test after a family.member tested positive - son turned out to be negative). We had a letter about his attendance and I really lost my shit about it. He was only off because the law required him to be kept off school in 2/3rds of his absences. I think the whole system of school absences, the way they are poorly recorded, policed and either over or under enforced depending on where you live, is utterly ridiculous and not fit for purpose. You have my sympathies and yes to answer your question, I would be going to war over this with the LEA (it's unlikely the letter actually came from the school), but copy the school in to all emails / letters so they can see how it is affecting your family. It's discrimination against a child with an illness - can you imagine a workplace behaving so unreasonably?

There may be standard letters that schools are required to send out but they can still communicate in a sympathetic way alongside. When my daughter had letters for low attendance she also had a hand written note from her guidance teacher acknowledging her health concerns.

Do the Local Authorities have any leeway in how they implement the legislation -or is everyone across England and Wales getting exactly the same letter in exactly the same circumstances?

If the local authorities are composing their own letters then they should be the ones to lobby about it rather than the individual schools?

I worked in schools for many years and I understand why people get upset by these letters getting sent out, but can I say a few things in schools’ defence?

1. Schools have targets to meet for attendance. Low overall attendance figures are a flag which can cause issues for schools, not least of which is triggering an Ofsted Inspection. A low attendance figure can mean failing an Ofsted inspection and that can cause a while world of pain for the school, it’s staff and the children.
2. School budgets are stripped to the bone. Once the daily running costs are deducted (fuel bills, council tax, the outrageous % the MAT take, what’s left has to pay for staff and resources. If you are choosing how to spend your last £20k in the budget (assuming you have £20k left, most schools are running deficits) and your choice is to hire an administrator to read and check letters, a new roof for the leaky science block or an additional part time teacher or TA in the classroom, which would you choose? You can only pick one and you need all of them.
3. one of the biggest drains on leadership and admin time is dealing with parental complaints. That’s not to suggest parents shouldn’t complain if you feel it’s justified, but just bear this in mind if you are reacting in the heat of the moment.

finally, from a parent point of view, you are not going to end up in court or fined for a student absence if you have a justifiable reason for them being off. It’s OK to ignore letters from the school and don’t take it personally. Generally, school staff do care about their children and families, they just don’t have time or enough staff to run the way they should. It’s the most stressful thing to have to deal with day in and day out, knowing that you can only ever do a half arsed job even if you’re working 100+ hours a week. School staff and NHS staff are leaving because they are burnt out through caring about people and working too hard. Please think about that before going in all guns blazing because you got an automated letter.

I worked in schools for many years and I understand why people get upset by these letters getting sent out, but can I say a few things in schools’ defence?

1. Schools have targets to meet for attendance. Low overall attendance figures are a flag which can cause issues for schools, not least of which is triggering an Ofsted Inspection. A low attendance figure can mean failing an Ofsted inspection and that can cause a while world of pain for the school, it’s staff and the children.
2. School budgets are stripped to the bone. Once the daily running costs are deducted (fuel bills, council tax, the outrageous % the MAT take, what’s left has to pay for staff and resources. If you are choosing how to spend your last £20k in the budget (assuming you have £20k left, most schools are running deficits) and your choice is to hire an administrator to read and check letters, a new roof for the leaky science block or an additional part time teacher or TA in the classroom, which would you choose? You can only pick one and you need all of them.
3. one of the biggest drains on leadership and admin time is dealing with parental complaints. That’s not to suggest parents shouldn’t complain if you feel it’s justified, but just bear this in mind if you are reacting in the heat of the moment.

finally, from a parent point of view, you are not going to end up in court or fined for a student absence if you have a justifiable reason for them being off. It’s OK to ignore letters from the school and don’t take it personally. Generally, school staff do care about their children and families, they just don’t have time or enough staff to run the way they should. It’s the most stressful thing to have to deal with day in and day out, knowing that you can only ever do a half arsed job even if you’re working 100+ hours a week. School staff and NHS staff are leaving because they are burnt out through caring about people and working too hard. Please think about that before going in all guns blazing because you got an automated letter.

Montelukast was a game changer for my DS. We were told it would be 50/50 whether it worked for him. Took a few days to kick in, then massive massive improvement. Hope it works for your DS!

In what way is that a defence @Mynan ?

1. Sending a letter to a child that you know is struggling with a serious health condition is not going to approve their attendance. So utterly pointless.

1. The cost of someone checking letters is not comparable to the cost of either a new roof or a part time teacher. Divert 10 min a week of the time spent sending the letters. If you add up the cost of sending a letter to the wrong parent and dealing with the fallout, it's cheaper to check.

1. See above.

Teachers are not leaving teaching because parents are challenging administrative errors.

go to war on them - how dare they send the ‘automatic’ letter when your DS has a medical condition !!!!

WTAF kind of reasoning is that?!

I got a letter that my child only had 50% attendance. It was very foreboding (obviously because 50% attendence is awful)

Thing was it was their 3rd week back after summer and they had missed the first week due to flu.

It's just an automated system.

I wouldn’t worry, once the attendance gets to below 90% the school send out letters. You have updated the school so I wouldn’t worry.

...finally, from a parent point of view, you are not going to end up in court or fined for a student absence if you have a justifiable reason for them being off. It’s OK to ignore letters from the school and don’t take it personally. Generally, school staff do care about their children and families, they just don’t have time or enough staff to run the way they should. It’s the most stressful thing to have to deal with day in and day out, knowing that you can only ever do a half arsed job even if you’re working 100+ hours a week. School staff and NHS staff are leaving because they are burnt out through caring about people and working too hard. Please think about that before going in all guns blazing because you got an automated letter.

Plenty of the parents receiving distressing and inappropriate letters erroneously threatening 'further action' when absences are due to well documented disabilities or long term health conditions, are also hard pressed public sector workers, who could also do without this. Being a carer is pretty tough gig.

School leadership teams have to follow attendance guidance and they also have to follow equality legislation and SEND guidance. This will require judgement about circumstances, and differentiated responses, in the case of some students/families. Public servants are paid to take these judgements and to ensure their systems and processes (including their automated letters) do not discriminate against individuals with protected characteristics.

This is not some unreasonable burden. This is not optional. It is the law, and it is designed to ensure people/families are not treated unfairly because of a health condition or disability.

The letter is probably generated by the MIS (management information system) and is part of the schools attendance absence policy. The school should have recorded all the contacts you made but no one told the computer. Its an additional stress that you really don't need, you can ask for a meeting with your sons Tutor and sk them to explain the absence policy, tell them that the letter is an unnecessary stress. You've done your job.

Go to war.

I had one of these shitty emails from my sons headteacher asking me to reconsider the two days off for a funeral when his grandad died really suddenly.

My son has no dad and my dad was so close with him, they were like father and son. He wasn't very poorly and certainly didn't expect to find him dead one morning.

I don't care how auto generated these letters are, they make you feel shitty and there are a million other ways to talk about attendance.

They didn't want him having the two funeral days because he had been off with covid so it pushed his attendance under the 92% or whatever it needs to be.

Needless to say I told them to shove it

@Mrsweasleysclock I'm sorry you received this letter, especially with your son being so poorly. Hope today sees an improvement for him.

These letters come at a time when many parents are already stressed & anxious because of their child's health & just compound the issues, adding very non helpful guilt to the mire 🤨
We may have just been lucky & I will have doomed myself by even writing this
but neither DD's primary or secondary school (so far) have ever sent us one of these letters. She has a life-long, life-limiting medical condition & her school attendance is dire - 34% last year. I'm sure letters will have been generated but some one at her schools will have prevented the letters ever reaching us & it is so appreciated.

Her secondary school has over 2000 students so it's impressive that they can filter & proves that it can be done.

As a slight side topic I have pondered the legitimacy of schools/LA's/DOE
asking for 'proof' given private nature of an individuals health records & the potential GDPR implications of where any such evidence is kept. If there was ever a legal challenge to this & anyone felt strongly enough to challenge via courts, would that bring a change to the way absence & ill health is dealt with and the veracity of such letters?

I do understand & support safe-guarding, that checks & balances need to be in place but equally compassion & common sense should also be held at the forefront. A systematic, one sized fits all approach is not how society works!

Creaking - good point. DfE guidance states:

In the majority of cases a parent’s notification that their child is ill can be
accepted without question or concern. Schools should not routinely request that parents provide medical evidence to support illness. Schools are advised not to request medical evidence unnecessarily as it places additional pressure on health professionals, their staff and their appointments system particularly if the illness is one that does not require treatment by a health professional. Only where the school has a genuine and reasonable doubt about the authenticity of the illness should medical evidence be requested to support the absence.

Despite this, one academy chain locally has an attendance policy which includes a table that purports to show DfE coding guidance, but shows medical evidence of absence as a requirement in every instance where the register is to be marked as absent due to illness.

Targets do not trump honesty and integrity, or non-discriminatory practice.

@allalltheevennumbers

Evidence for all illness based absence. So an illness like a stomach bug that doesn't otherwise require an appointment with a doctor, should they vomit or defecate in a zip lock bag so it can be handed in as evidence.

The letter isn't really 'for' you. It's for the parent who doesn't give a shit about education, who lets their kid stay home and calls in to report they are 'poorly' or 'not well', or have a 'bad cold', despite being told (endlessly) that these are not adequate reasons to miss education. For the parents who schedule doctor and dentist appointments in school time when children have more days not in school than in school, (195 days per year are school days) and could attend non-urgent appointments then. For the parents who throw up their hands when we speak to them about persistent absenteeism and say 'what can I do?' For the parents who book a two week holiday for children in KS4, in term time, and say 'we can't afford any other time', and then cannot grasp why their child is behind and does poorly in exams.
You are bearing the brunt of other parents' depressingly poor attitude to their children's education, and I'm sorry.
I have a tutee in Y11 who has 100% attendance since Y7. They looked really unwell today and I gently suggested that they might have stayed home. They replied saying 'but I don't want to miss important lessons, Miss.' For that family, the message has got through too strongly - I would have tucked that kid up in bed with a hot squash and a book in a flash, if I were able to.
Don't take it to heart, it's a blunt tool to crack a massive, uncrackable nut.

Computers mess up all the time but I would talk to whomever at the school about his illness.
Has he been getting his homework to try to keep up.
That's important. Don't worry about the letter. Chin up.