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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Headteachers should drive to the homes of absent pupils and get them into school

346 replies

Amuseaboosh · 14/07/2023 07:54

Headteachers "have a duty" to drive to the homes of absent pupils and bring them into school, the education secretary has said.

Gillian Keegan said levels of absence in schools were now "a crisis," with recent figures revealing that 125,000 pupils spent more time out of class than in.

I know how very lucky I am to have never had to cope with any of my children not wanting to go to school.
However, I'm not so ignorant that I believe that all the parents dealing with this issue haven't tried absolutely everything to get their child into school. Where is ANY member of teaching staff supposed to find the time to attend to 125,000 pupils in person to get them to come to school?

AIBU in thinking Gillian is out of touch and ignorant? Or can someone see wisdom here that I cannot?

OP posts:
What3words · 14/07/2023 08:26

The school system currently isn't fir for purpose.

RoyalImpatience · 14/07/2023 08:28

@HeBeaverandSheBeaver absolutely along with a general election revolution in this area.

Ya really not that hard to except in extremes cases.

Mog37 · 14/07/2023 08:28

megletthesecond · 14/07/2023 08:15

DD is on 70%. Her head would need body armour and a hotline to CAMHS / police to get her in on days she refuses.

If the government want to help then fund schools and CAMHS properly.

This. Just this.

When DD was at her worst, she tried a suicide attempt rather than go in. The thought of her head teacher rocking up in the morning to collect her would be funny if I hadn’t lived through three years of having a child with serious mental illness.

If the government want to help, they can fund CAHMS properly so that children get help before families are at crisis point.

(P.S. After the suicide attempt, we did get some amazing support from CAHMS and with the right medication and therapy, she is doing better. But she’ll never go back to school.)

CampsieGlamper · 14/07/2023 08:28

But would fine the parents who take a child out of school for a holiday, at the drop of a hat.

MackenCheese · 14/07/2023 08:29

bookworm44 · 14/07/2023 08:09

My son's head teacher came to collect him (with my agreement) he absolutely flipped, smashed up the house and attacked me. She ended up having to call the police and he was arrested.

Yikes! I'm so sorry this happened. I can imagine my son doing similarly..

OrangesAndLemming · 14/07/2023 08:32

I was a child on the receiving end of a teacher visiting me in my home. It does happen, I’m not saying it always works. For me it didn’t help, but perhaps for some it’s what the parents need if it’s a parental issue. In my case it was a mental
health issue stemming from the death of my brother so a teacher visit wasn’t going to fix that!

Very out of touch to suggest that teachers and staff aren’t visiting homes and reaching out to vulnerable children who aren’t attending school.

otherwayup · 14/07/2023 08:34

BluNomad · 14/07/2023 08:06

Teachers should stick to teaching rather than worrying about the schools attendance record, they couldn’t give a f about the education of a single child or the issues a parent might face getting a child to school. If the head or any teacher turned up at my door they’d get it slammed in their face

You sound nice 😳

Mojitosaremyfavourite · 14/07/2023 08:37

bookworm44 · 14/07/2023 08:09

My son's head teacher came to collect him (with my agreement) he absolutely flipped, smashed up the house and attacked me. She ended up having to call the police and he was arrested.

💐💐💐

That sounds awful. I really hope that things are improved now and both you and your son are getting the support you both need.

Mama678 · 14/07/2023 08:39

Its a lot more complex in most cases than simply skiving off. Anxiety/undiagnosed autism/undiagnosed adhd etc kids are on camhs waiting lists but there like 2 years long… lost in the system. I feel bad for these kids.

school doesn’t work for all and there should be an alternative in place. Covid lockdowns have a lot to answer for imo

ButImNotOldEnough · 14/07/2023 08:41

Big load of bollocks, headteachers have enough to do as it is. My youngest DS has ASD and ADHD, I’m lucky that the school are fantastic and go well above and beyond to make him feel happy and settled and enjoy going in each day. All it takes is a funny feeling sock on his foot or a poor nights sleep or his breakfast routine not being executed perfectly to trigger a meltdown though, if his headteacher had to come out every time he didn’t make it to school she’d get on first name terms with my neighbours and if she were to try and force him to school she’d escalate the situation beyond saving.

Tawstrong · 14/07/2023 08:43

We need access to counselling for kids who refuse school- one girl in our primary refuses to go in due to mental health issues. She’s on CAMHS waiting list (currently >20 week wait for assessment). For so many it’s mental health.

Because we’re in an affluent area our funding is some of lowest in the country, our school is in deficit. We can’t afford a TA for each class yet alone a counsellor or Place2Be provision. Whereas schools in London are very well funded and have school counsellors. It’s a postcode lottery.

Lots of parents living in affluent areas don’t have the money for private psychology/ counselling. If the government funds Place2Be I bet they would get lots of these kids back to school fairly quickly.

Ohhhhhhhhh · 14/07/2023 08:43

Dp didn't go to school. He wasn't at home either though so they wouldn't have found him there. He was just plain naughty to be honest, a teacher turning up at his house wouldn't have changed a thing.

Jujubes5 · 14/07/2023 08:45

Turn off the internet. I'ts not much fun at home with no gaming etc.

Tiny2018 · 14/07/2023 08:46

My now 17 year old daughters attendance dropped to just under 70% when she was 14. Terrible year for her due to some bullying that the school could not seem to get sorted. This inevitably ended with her refusing to go to school, laying in bed crying for the majority of the year.

A school Attendance Officer was sent to our home and told her that no matter what was happening at school, she needed to attend. I told her in no uncertain terms that I was unwilling to send her in while these issues were ongoing and to leave my home, which she did. I would have said exactly the same thing to her headteacher had he have turned up.

We ended up working with the school to look at some of the issues that were keeping her in fear of attending and her attendance went up in the last year to just under 90% and she passed every single one of her GCSEs with flying colours.

My point is, it's all well and good demanding good attendance, but there are oftentimes very good reasons for kids avoiding school. I wasn't willing to risk my daughters already fragile mental health by forcing her to go (not that I could anyway) and nothing anybody did or threatened at the time (received letters stating there may be court action) would have changed that.

Sirzy · 14/07/2023 08:46

Jujubes5 · 14/07/2023 08:45

Turn off the internet. I'ts not much fun at home with no gaming etc.

Spoken like someone who has no experience of school based trauma in children!

Gateappreciation · 14/07/2023 08:46

Yippee, don’t have to pay for an (an expensive) school bus pass, as the head will pick my child up for me! Door to door taxi service.

(lighthearted -ish…)

Tawstrong · 14/07/2023 08:46

And yes our senior leadership team visits children at home - welcomed by the parents- but if a child has serious mental health issues there’s really nothing they can do to get them into school without the healthcare provision.

1 in 6 primary age children have a diagnosable mental health condition. There is something going seriously wrong in our society. It’s so sad.

MillicentTrilbyHiggins · 14/07/2023 08:46

Lizzt2007 · 14/07/2023 08:05

Some schools do this, some schools sit on their little chairs telling a parent of a school refusing 16 year old bigger than she is that she should 'get him to school by any means necessary, drag him if you have to' after she spent months asking them for help with him.

This was my experience. Everything I suggested (which came from things DS thought would help) was met with a "No. It's your job as a parent to get him into school". Constantly being told I was a failure didn't do much for my mental health either tbh.
Eventually DS was signed off by the dr. Then school decided we needed a weekly visit from someone, the inclusion person i think just to check I wasn't abusive. Which I'm glad they do, but it felt very intrusive!

tfresh · 14/07/2023 08:47

> Not all parents will have tried everything. Some of them will have tried nothing.

Op being extremely generous in their original post. Benefit sanctions for your kids not going to school seems reasonable to me. Might take a chunk out of the problem

Sirzy · 14/07/2023 08:47

If a child was telling school they where scared to go home every day school would rightly take it seriously and put measures in place to find out what was happening.

if a child is telling school every day they are scared to go to school then it’s a parenting problem and nothing school can do!

BluNomad · 14/07/2023 08:47

I also don’t understand why a teacher would think they have more authority than a parent; they think they are the attendance police turning up to seize you into attendance custody..seriously what planet are these morons living on

overitunderit · 14/07/2023 08:49

It shows how out of touch she is that she isn't aware that many schools already have people who do exactly this and work with families who are repeat offenders of not sending their kids to school to try and get them into education. It's a bloody hard job I would say.

LolaSmiles · 14/07/2023 08:50

There are school refusers and kids with mental health issues.
There are also parents who can't be arsed.
We have one kid who has missed almost a full term due to days off. They are off if it rains, if it is very sunny, if it snows.
If there a big football match on tv, they'll be off the next day. They miss at least a day a week!
I was going to say the same thing.

She has totally missed the point. Poor attendance is caused by a range of factors.

tsmainsqueeze · 14/07/2023 08:51

BramblyHedge · 14/07/2023 08:21

She is ignorant. She does not understand complexity sitting behind those absences. Most are not people who can't be bothered or who have useless parents. SEN, rising mental health issues, housing crisis so people are rehomed away from schools, ...many things sit behind pupil absence. I say this with my own experience as a parent of a EBSA teen and a school governor in a school with many disadvantaged families.

I agree , i also think since lockdown and current closures due to strikes there has been a shift in how parents feel about school attendance in general.
Education is important to me and my 3 kids have always had good attendance my older 2 are adults and i have 1 left at secondary .
She has no issues at school but has never really liked it and i saw her thrive in the first lockdown ,she also did well with online lessons ,i know this is not the same for all but after having it rammed down our throats that kids must be in school to learn and actually seeing that this is not necessarily the case i think that there should be some kind of leeway as to how our children receive their education.
Of course there is the social aspect but some kids just aren't cut out to sit in a classroom full of people and distractions along with some of the petty rules in some schools i totally understand and empathise with kids who just refuse to be there.

ZenNudist · 14/07/2023 08:52

Schools already do this. As education secretary they should have a duty to educate themselves about what's going on before making stupid statements.

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