Is this your child? Staying home on Friday?

[NetballMumGrrr]

Article about how more children are staying home on a Friday as their parents are at home?

Link to BBC News

I’m assuming it’s vulnerable children. Not sure why people are not valuing education more or AIBU?

I agree with the strikes having had an effect too. It's difficult to take schools seriously when they insist on your child being in every day if they're frequently closing with limited notice due to teacher strikes. There's definitely a sense of 'Do as we say, not as we do'.

Are schools going to have to count non-attendance due to strikes in their attendance figures, I wonder 🤔?

Well my DD may be showing up in the statistics, but it is not actually true. Since hitting sixth form they have a swipe in system, and my DD is lousy at swiping in (which doesn't mean she doesn't go, but she doesn't seem ever to remember to waive her lanyard, and you don't need to swipe in to get in, so she forgets). I do tell her and tell her (including reminding her as she walks out the door), but there is only so much you can do about this with an ADHD child. I have said to the school that if they want an ADHD child to swipe in, they need to make there be some barrier or something that reminds her to do so, as she just forgets, but they do nothing.
When she has a subject lesson first period they seem to work out that she is in the lesson and she is then marked as there. But Fridays she has a lot of frees, and so according to her record she has barely been there on Fridays the whole year. I keep emailing (I have access to her attendence record, and it looks atrocious, but all the teachers of her subjects will tell you she is pretty much always there - very small classes at sixth form, so not like they won't notice). And the school doesn't seem to want to do anything about it - it bothers me a lot, I don't think it is good for her to have an attendance record that looks like hers does this year, but she can't see why I am bothered given that she actually is in class, and the school don't seem bothered either.

Reparations for covid?! You can't be serious... The country won't even make reparations for slavery and colonialism!

I used to work in an infant school.

By the end of the year the trend was that attendance was highest on a Thursday and lowest on a Friday.

Monday was only just slightly better than Friday and Tuesday and Wednesday somewhere in between

Now obviously this is only a sample of one school.

It doesn't say if it's primary or secondary children.

if its primary must be the parents - but can't see why they'd want the kids round if wfh so I'd suspect long weekends.

If it's secondary - mental health deteriorate over week causing crisis of school refusal Friday maybe - god knows behavioral and noise levels have massively increased since pandemic which make whole environment harder for everyone.

Though DD2 and DS have 100% attendance so far many of their peers are truanting - especially DD2 Y9 year group often because the parents are out at work and they were waved off to school and suspect Friday would be a peak day.

I wonder if it corelation and not causation the article is implying - that wfh may be happening more Friday but isn't related to the school absences.

Frequent?
limited notice?

Everyone is "quiet quitting"

Younger kids are tired by the end of the week, especially if ill, so I guess parents send them in all week and by Friday they can't manage any more.

Are people more likely to work from home on Fridays? It's not the case for my job.

I admit I probably am more likely to let the kids stay off school if I am wfh, compared with an office day where I will have a childcare problem if they don't go in. However I generally err on the side of dosing with calpol and sending them in, when they would actually be better off at home (and school would be better off without their germs).

Yes this is my child! Always off on a Friday. Mondays are 50/50.

I think the BBC have misinterpreted the data on this:

The report (and it's not entirely clear how they collected their data, or what methodology was used) actually says:

Secondly, whilst Fridays are the most common day for children to be absent, it is actually those children who miss mid-weekdays, Tuesday-Thursday, who are more likely to be habitually absent from school.

This suggests two separate problems.

Students are most commonly absent on Fridays. It doesn't say if any statistical analysis has been done, so this could be within normal variance, but equally it sort of makes sense- you've had 4 days of being exposed to other people's germs, you're at your tiredest, etc.

And the problem of habitual absence- which actually isn't worst on Fridays.

I do think there's been an increase in absence since Covid, BUT also, Rachel De Souza has an agenda, and I believe she cherry picks data to support this...

The data was collected from the autumn term, i.e. before the strikes started so y'know.

You know the people who moan about absence, and those on strike are generally not the same people...

I've moved Boroughs 5 weeks ago. Sorted out applying for a school as soon as I got my completion date and had been in contact with the schools and council before that point. My DS7 has still not been placed. DS4 has been placed immediately since it was directly to the school nursery...he was in the next school day after we moved. The eldest does have and EHCP so I know that placing him takes time but 5 Weeks!! (And this is after confirmation that there is space in the class) When I speak to the school office repeatedly and the contact at the council all I get the impression that I'm being a nag.

So yes...In time if I really did want to whisk my family away for a long weekend, I'm going to find it incredibly pointless to have those same staff trying to make me feel bad about it.

Strikes/snow days/covid and even strep in our last school created closures. It's hard not to have a mindset shift.

Like a PP said, my attitude to school has shifted a bit. Pre covid, I wouldn't dream of taking a day off for anything but illness. Now, I feel like there's so much my kids have to catch up on, not just schooling. They missed seeing family, seeing other places, experiences, and I now think that sort of thing is just as important as going to school. So having a day off to go and stay with family, or go to see a new place, I'm ok with. Not every week, just now and then.

It's not that I don't value education. And I'm not thinking to hell with it all because of the strikes. I'm just thinking now that there's more to learn than by sitting in a classroom. And I don't say any of this lightly, I was a teacher for 20 years.

My parents were like this with me. Thought nothing of letting me have Fridays off school so we could travel early and beat the traffic.

My own children go to school always unless they are unwell. Education is so important and I wish my parents pushed me more.

This isn’t all councils in Scotland, only a handful. Although it’s being suggested for other areas which is worrying

@Dolares This isn’t all councils in Scotland, only a handful. Although it’s being suggested for other areas which is worrying

Ds is one of these children with very poor attendance- in his case because he is seriously ill. He is more likely to miss Friday than any other day of the week as that's when his clinic appointments are. Also, as he suffers from exhaustion, after 4 days straight of school he doesn't always have the energy for day 5.

Probably a bit to do with the collective trauma of covid on primary school age children.

So many of them are anxious because their world was so unstable for a massive chunk of their lives.

There's massive wait times for the most minor of interventions and assesments for run of the mill issues like ASD or ADHD. That's going to reduce school engagement.

And meanwhile we pile on the stress of how fast our children must learn their phonics and maths with little to no respect to the fact that this generation have missed out on a fuck tonne of socialisation.

But of course, blame the parents. They're just dumb lazy cunts, eh?

Not that they're worn down like crazy, watching every penny after 2 years of lockdown then shoved into a joy-sucking cost of living crisis, bills going crazy and wages stagnating, fighting with their school refusing children day-after-day-after-day with fuck all support or intervention except for the teachers in the school who are rapidly working themselves towards either burnout or compassion fatigue.

I agree with @Hairfriar - school is important and we never dreamed of taking the kids out prior to covid but now we will. DD missed two partial afternoons in Y6 (after SATs) to go to a football game and a gig. DS will miss a day at the end of term because his sister has an inset day and he doesn’t so we can miss Friday traffic to get away. They’ve missed loads in their lives, and missing the odd day of school is irrelevant in the scheme of things. If they had absence through illness I’d think differently, but neither has missed a day this academic year.

I've definitely become less strict if my one school hating child claims illness when I WFH. I never thought I'd be this parent but short of picking up a 10 year old and wrestling him into the car and along into school, how do you actually get a refuser into school?

Thankfully the refusal days are now few and far between and I do value education and attendance but I totally see where others are coming from being a bit more "meh" about attendance when DC can be supervised at home without me losing my job.

You're right, I don't value what passed as education in this country. I do value time together with my children.

This isn't me (yet) because my child is too small, but I absolutely believe that a day spent doing nice things together as a family or one to one with a parent could well have more value than a fifth day at school. A day where you take a child to a museum, read together, cook together, go for a walk in the woods has lots of value, both educational and emotional. Day number 34 of learning the same basic maths and identifying nouns, not so much. School goes at some general all size fits all pace which doesn't actually maximise anyone's learning. Time spent with your own child is time dedicated to them, at their own pace.

My DD is in the process of getting diagnosed with asthma she had a very bad chest infection . previously she has been a 100 percent attendance . We all know medical stuff has taken a back seat with COVID pandemic she also finally got a dental appointment . Also the government didn't really take education seriously when they were closing all the time. I got a letter that said 97 percent attendance she had to go to a&e for antibiotics then I had to take her for multiple trips to GP for asthma. Sometimes it cannot be helped

My DD has tutoring at home, also I would take her out the last day of term to go on holiday. They don't really do any work last day of term it's watching dvds and eating chocolate (DD tells me this)

I suspect for both parents and kids who lived thru covid the idea of compulsory education is a bit broken. Attendance at uni is appalling too.

You can't spend 18 months telling parents that their children don't need to be at school and then expect them to send them in every day. Yet another reason why lockdown was so fucking stupid.

Private school parents might feel differently, given that the cost per day is eye-watering, especially if you have more than one DC.

I've done it a few times when my daughter was little lol
To maximise holiday time
So just before half term, we would leave Thursday afternoon and return sunday night, that would give us a full 9 days of holiday not including travel days so yh I don't see why that's so bad
Obviously every Friday is too much
But here and there is not gunna harm kids at all 😂