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

[Amuseaboosh]

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?

The "certain kind of household" here is one with two loving and supportive parents who both do higher professional jobs, one of whom has been a school governor for many years at the local primary school. With another daughter who has just done A -Levels and is off to university all being well in September, no problems with attendance. And a younger daughter recently diagnosed with anxiety, ASD and combined ADHD who has struggled to attend school since 2020 and who had no attendance issues before that.

The majority of school refusers are ND.

Same here.

We did turn off the internet, left him every day with the very basics. He still would not go into school. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Thank you so much for the kind responses to my post. It was very much one of the worst times of my life.

Another out of touch Tory minister. This is the government that made Andrea Jenkins and Jonathan Gullis education ministers. Keagan is just another one of a long line

Staff do regularly at our school , daily phone calls and. Referrals to agencies if necessary

My grandson has medical issues and is under GOSH but the school are really pestering when he can’t go in . I am not sure that is fair .

Just to add, DD's tutor and well being lead did visit for the first time last week. But they made it quite clear they would not be forcing her in and it was just a quick chat with me and said hello through DD's door as she wouldn't come out.

She does actually attend a very academic extra curricular lesson with the head and fewer pupils, all of whom are perfectly behaved and she can cope with that. She's not totally anti school. She just cannot cope with noise, corridors, bad behaviour, sitting in the wrong place in class etc.

Oh my goodness, this is my story too! And I thought it was just me 🙈 School had constant meetings to talk about reintegration, were visibly annoyed that I invited CAMHS when they tried to cut them out of the loop… and then complained directly to CAMHS as they didn’t like the fact that I would only come to meetings with my DD’s care-coordinator.

My DD was off because of her mental health and was under the care of CAMHS.

It didn’t make any sense. Unless of course, school admitted that attendance figures were much more important to them that the mental health of a child, and that it was easier to blame me then to make reasonable adjustments.

I just do not understand why in this day and age high performing SEN children cannot just be offered online schooling as a matter of course, if that is what they and their parents prefer. What is the actual problem? Is online school really that much more expensive than actual loud noisy in person school?

CAMHS actually advise against turning off the internet and gaming.

For children who are in such a bad state of mental health that they are unable to be at school cutting them off from the internet is like cutting off a life line.

It is punishing children for poor mental health.

@bookworm44

Also I think the research about poor attendance leading to poor outcomes is misleading.

When kids struggle to attend secondary school they often thrive at college or find some other learning environment, home education, or work training where they do well post 16, when they have supportive parents, or otherwise go on to do pretty well in life. It just takes kids, particularly with autism and/or ADHD a bit more time to find their way and mainstream education pre-16 is too rigid to meet their learning needs.

Even many neurotypical children do well in spite of state secondary school not because of it.

That would work for some but not all. I've looked into paying for online school and would be happy to set DD2 up with this, but there are some aspects of actually going to school that she likes and she says she really wants to actually go to school. But sometimes can't manage it.

Was same for dd as well. My older dc had all attended without any difficulties (of course then school implied that youngest was somehow favoured) went to sixth form/ university/ into work so it wasn't something that I knew anything about.
I certainly didn't feel supported by the school at all, there didn't seem to be any real intention to help their only interest was dd's attendance at all cost. Only when I told them we had finished trying did they propose any adjustments but it was much too late by then. Dd had no problems attending independent specialist though, once the environment was right she happily attended.

Even before lockdown mental health issues were a problem in schools.
Dd had a breakdown in 2018, school admitted then they could barely cope with the number of pupils in crisis.
Lockdown has exacerbated an existing problem.

Thank you @lifeturnsonadime - our stories sound eerily similar, at the worst points my DD was trying to climb out of windows and get out of moving cars.

I don’t think anyone who hasn’t lived through an experience like that, as a parent, can ever imagine what it feels like to watch such a young child in that amount of distress and to be powerless to help.

I didn’t know DD was autistic, and I didn’t know what was happening to her, but as a mother, I couldn’t help thinking that it must be my fault somehow.

When I went in to school and explained that DD wasn’t in as we’d had to call an ambulance the night before, as we couldn’t keep her safe, the deputy head told me, in a headshaking and dismissive manner, “unless you have a doctors note it will have to be unauthorised absence”, and then told me that we needed to “get her in”.

I couldn’t believe anyone could be so devoid of humanity.

And we weren’t even “one of those families” that have been alluded to. I can only imagine how we’d have been treated if we were!

I would love this for ds, but at the same time he gains a lot socially by being in school, and on good days he enjoys it.

What would be amazing would be a mix of online and being in school. If he’s too anxious to attend he could log in to online lessons.

Could schools always have a livestream option? I don’t know if this is workable, but that would be ideal for us. Absence from school maybe wouldn’t have to mean absence from learning.

For a lot of children having that option may mean they are able to attend school more easily.

Yes...but not always. I think I just forgot for a second how middle class mumsnet is.

So sorry it happened to you too. Our CAMHS worker was incandescent that they were cutting her out and disregarding medical advice. The school weren't bothered about dd's wellbeing at all it was always about attendance figures. CAMHS actually were really supportive for us and I know they get a lot of bad press.
School had a last ditch attempt by making a safeguarding referral to social care stating dd hadn't been seen in months despite them funding the tutor twice weekly and knowing CAMHS saw her fortnightly at home. Social care closed the referral after a phone call to CAMHS.

Our school have offered to come and talk to my son when he refuses to go in, but his refusal is due to anxiety (ASD), so having his headmaster turn up in his "safe space" has never seemed like a good solution to me. As PPs have said, most school refusal is due to ND. What is needed is more funding for schools, CAMHS, and better provision for ND students. But the easy option is obviously to blame the schools and say they should be doing more.

Livestreaming normal lessons is possible but with problems. We did it early on when we first went back after COVID. If individual kids were off they could join via a Teams call. It was great if the kids in the class were in task, listening, not overly distracted by the novelty etc. There are issues with privacy. if the child at home records the call they have the teacher and other kids recorded..can be misused.
I teach in a private school and we have no problem popping work home via Teams for the small number of kids who have sporadic attendance but mainstream are reluctant to do this as a) workload and b) not normalising non attendance. I do think there's scope for every LA to have a dedicated team who liaises between schools and home to provide online lessons once EBSA has been established. It can be recorded as such on school rolls so the holy grail of attendance figures are not impacted. On fact, if OFSTED / the government generally just stopped making that such a crucial factor for school performance it might help schools take a more helpful approach.v

I was told to “drag my son to school”. So I slung him in a wheelchair, him screaming his head off, shoes off. People staring at us. We make it to the gates late.

Apparently “they didn’t mean it literally because it’s abuse and I need to use words”

But after that, they still reported I wasn’t “enthusiastically getting him to school” time and time again.

Undiagnosed SN is unbelievably common in people seen as chaotic, or “lazy parents on benefits”.
People who are seen as benefit scum are often just desperate to keep the status quo and terrified of losing the stability that benefits bring. If you’re not terribly well educated it can be difficult to seek and sustain work.

Theres a structural issue that needs addressing, but it means more support is needed all round, better education on how to budget, cook, manage household admin etc. Many children would hugely benefit from learning these things, and that could make more of a difference to people’s lives than, say, being pressured to reach prescribed levels of academic standards that many pupils cannot achieve.

My ds is one of those with attendance of less then 85% and I think this would be an excellent idea. Obviously in his case it will involve the head wrestling him from a hospital bed rather than collecting him from home but bring it on! The head looks like a comic book villain (he's actually a very nice guy) but his consultant is kick-arse and could totally take him. And the Head of Diatetics looks like she'd love to punch something.

It would certainly do something to while away the time which can drag on a ward...