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 wish people realised that every single day of school they let children miss, materially damages their life chances.

Nonsense. It totally depends on the context, and one day is neither here nor there.

The article goes into a lot more detail and suggests multiple reasons and doesn't reach a conclusion.

Persistent absence is 7 or more days off school.

My DS falls into that category. He's been off ill with covid and then norovirus. Both absences include Fridays.

And we took him out in a Friday for a long weekend.

I wish people realised that every single day of school they let children miss, materially damages their life chances.

We've always had view if they are well they are in - we still got hassled with attendance in primary some years especially early on in year as kids do get sick but they are 100% attendance this year so far.

We've had light sprinkling of snow - school closed it's possible where teachers are is worse but the other schools in city are doing delayed opening till roads cleared not whole day closed. DD1 college is open in area hit harder according to news.

A lot of the teachers were surprised when school closed for everyone even Y11 in strikes because large proportion of staff aren't the striking union - school closed and said they would immediately.

We do try and give message they have to turn up to learn - even when they have a succession of supply teachers with no experiences in their subject -but we'll soon be getting messages about how every lesson/day counts and frankly it rings hallow even to me.

Very true.

My son actually has a better attendance than his teachers.

I wish people realised that every single day of school they let children miss, materially damages their life chances This is overly simplistic and a meaningless statement.

The reasons why some children are off school are the root cause of their poor life chances. If you are off school because you have to care for an alcoholic parent or have a very chaotic home life or are suffering acute mental health issues or have a drug/alcohol problem yourself - it is the root cause that needs addressing not just the attendance. Plenty of people fail even if they are in school an 'acceptable' amount.

Absence is a symptom of a deeper problem in many cases.

As a parent I support the strikes despite the disruption. Teachers, like NHS staff, have struggled on with cut after cut after cut. The teaching shortages, the budget shortages and the shit wages all need addressing.

@carriedout

Think you missed the point.

Because a properly educated youth is important for all of us.

I have kids in exam years with no subject teachers - so I do understand why they are striking and wish them success so the slow hemorrhage of good teachers stops.

However I am still frustrated that my child's school makes no attempt to mitigate the effects like keep Y11 in - like other schools in the area do and often work isn't set online despite everyone saying it will be.

Plus it's very hard to say yes that time lost is fine while this time isn't - even when it too has a good reason.

Exactly. It's about consistently. Either attendance is important or it is not. It can't be important some of the time and then unimportant when it suits the government/ schools/ teachers. If teachers take time off to strike (as is their right), it can come as no surprise if parents are then somewhat sceptical of the view that every day counts and schools always have their children's best interests at heart. You can't demand blind adherence from others when your own actions undermine the message in question.

The strikes are intended to disrupt education. That’s what strikes are - people withdrawing their labour to cause disruption and force the employers to listen. The teachers know the missed days are bad for education, that’s the point. They’re desperate enough to strike even though they know it has a negative impact. They prove precisely zero about the importance of attendance.

Given the legal framework around striking, IMO it is very simple to explain the difference between strikes and taking time off for leisure.

Schools should not have lied to kids about needing to attend when sick. I have made this point to my school on numerous occasions and have always declined attendance awards.

Some absence is fine, some absence is not. Every child is individual. The fines for holidays are stupid, it is just gesture politics.

While i do value my child’s education I do strongly feel my mindset has changed since covid and strikes, we now have term time holidays with no hesitation, we have mental health days off if autistic ds is burnt out, we have long weekend breaks to visit family further afield and I don’t hesitate to do any of that because my perspective totally shifted after covid, pre covid we wouldn’t have dared. Despite our days off my children are still high achievers with no academic concerns, I actually considered removing them from school and home schooling with a tutor part time and the rest learning outside the classroom as I now believe that’s equally as important. We are on about 85% attendance this year compared to previous years we’d never drop below 100% and the children are not worse off academically. Covid taught me there is so much more to learning than books and classrooms. To add We are not a vulnerable or lazy household and wfh has certainly made this more doable for me

When you have teachers actively disrupting children's education (however good the motive), it does signify a breakdown of the school/parent partnership.

Covid/lockdowns/strikes have created a situation where many parents no longer trust schools and teachers to act in their children's best interests. They're not happy to defer to the school's view of what is best for their children anymore and are more confident in making value judgements for themselves of, say, a few days off school for a non-exam year child weighed against a family trip or holiday or just the occasional 'duvet day'.

Given the legal framework around striking, IMO it is very simple to explain the difference between strikes and taking time off for leisure.
Schools should not have lied to kids about needing to attend when sick. I have made this point to my school on numerous occasions and have always declined attendance awards.
Some absence is fine, some absence is not. Every child is individual. The fines for holidays are stupid, it is just gesture politics.

We don't do school holidays or time off for leisure - and frankly Wales went insane with the attendance when sick stuff - the Welsh government publishing leaflet that communicable diseases were fine to be in school with and getting told off by Doctors publicly was a particular low point.

So I don't disagree with most of your post - but I do think long absences with covid - and we had a lot with years beings sent home and additional closures, strikes (and for us today snow days) are having an effect on pupil and parent perceptions on attendance.

We do seem to be getting through with our kids and the message they get from us is they need to be proactive with their education- get on on-line sites and use workbooks and do extra - ask us for help etc. not sit back and rely on school.

However if parents as pro education as us are getting frustrated as school closure at drop of a hat and then school's attendance nagging and attitude with actual illness and appointments then I can't see good things for families where they are more ambivalent or have additional concerns and priorities.

Perhaps if parents actually supported teachers instead of siding with the government, the strikes would not be needed in the first place. Parents are complicit in the underfunding of schools by allowing the government to blame teachers for the problems caused by underfunding.

Teachers are not their to teach OUR children. They are there to teach the NATION'S children. They are not my personal staff.

If parents don't trust teachers because of COVID lockdowns, those parents are thick.

The whole concept of blaming lazy parents and kids for persistent absence annoys me to no end!

Schools can be very lax on encouraging attendance other than ticking the boxes. My DS was out of education for a while due to unmet SEN. It was ME fighting for the support to get him back in to school. I was met with barriers all the way; his school rarely contacted us in that time and the local council weren’t interested either.

UK schools are full to the brim with kids, are underfunded and understaffed. Maybe the government should fix and fund the outside factors which are contributing to absence rather than punishing those of us who are stuck in a broken system trying to get out DC the support they are entitled to.

I know. One of DS’s teachers was off yesterday. So they went to class and no one was there. There was supposed to be a supply teacher but they hadn’t turned up. They were told to wait and spent the entire class in the corridor. Classrooms locked unless teacher present.

It is often depressing how little learning goes on during a day. Poor behaviour and a lack of effective management mean teachers spend time firefighting problems rather than teaching their subjects.

When a student miss a day at school they feel very lost next day because they missed the previous lesson.

It's hard enough to plan a lesson with different levels of differentiation and now we need to take into account that few of our students missed the previous lesson.

Yes, you do need to be able to take account of that and always have had to.

It is a tough job (done it) but pupils miss school for all sorts of reasons. In my training we were taught how to deal with these scenarios.

You will never get 100% attendance, obviously high attendance is desirable but there really should be no drama if a kid is off for a day due to illness or funeral or other.

Yes, this is what happens when a government deliberately and knowingly underfunds state schools.

Senior leadership can only do so much, if they had the staffing levels they had in 2010, things would be better.

What you're essentially saying is that teachers don't necessarily put the children they teach first but parents should support them anyway because they're working in the interests of an abstract group - the NATION's children - whatever that means. But parents have a very concrete responsibility to THEIR OWN children, to put them first. If actually my child's teachers aren't primarily interested in my child's education and welfare then, however sympathetic I am to their cause, I will put my child first. That doesn't mean being anti-teacher, but accepting the limitations on what schools and teachers can offer my child, since their interests aren't completely aligned with mine. And that means working to catch up the education my child missed as a result of the strikes, even if that undermines the disruption to education the strikes were intended to cause and is therefore anti-strike. And also deciding when they can take days off if, as a parent, I think this is beneficial even if this is anti-school. Because schools/teachers have their own agenda which is by necessity not particularly focused on my own child's needs. That's fine, but they can't demand parents blindly go along with it.

Clearly no one with half a brain cell blames teachers for school underfunding. And many parents did not vote for the current government. But we're raising our children in circumstances as they are at the moment and doing the best we can (which may not always involve unquestioning support for schools and/or teachers). I'm afraid that after being left to sink or swim during Covid, there's not really any way back to the unquestioning support that many parents had for schools and institutions pre-Covid. We're all a bit more sceptical and individualist now.

It's impossible to do that in secondary school when you have 5-6 different classes.

You can always give the kid a quick explanation 1:1 and keep spare copies of old worksheets but it's not the same.

We have 30 students in the classroom and 50 minute per lesson. It's not fair to spend 10 min in just 1 student because decided to chill at home last Friday.

Ive kept my child off on a few Fridays and yep it’s for travel, she’s only reception age though so wasn’t in school pre covid.