Children's Commissioner talks bollocks

[JustAnotherRandom]

'We can achieve 100% attendance, but only if we work together.'

How is 100% attendance realistically achievable?! What absolute bollocks is this?

YANBU - perfectly achievable
YABU - not achievable (even without covid, bullying, unmet SEN or mental health issues)

No idea how to enable voting.

Our school was sending out 100% attendance expectation letters in the same email as requiring kids to stay at home with a cough during the pandemic. They also send round two furries (I assume they have had DBS checks) to make any kids who can't attend 100% feel even worse.

It’s a joke, 100% is not achievable for the majority of people.

They know the many reasons for persistent absence but they don’t want to do anything about them.

We do need to look at why attendance has never recovered after COVID, but to improve the situation will take real investment and understanding.

Kids have so much to deal with and families have very little support.

100% attendance is clearly unachievable even if you could irradicate every non-illness day off.

Obviously children will always be unwell so it's a non-starter from that POV but I also just hate, even as a teacher, that no common sense can be applied to the situation. A child missing a Friday here or there at the end of a half-term in Reception or Y1 is not going to be impacted in the same way as a GSCE student coming up to their exams. Some higher ability children will be impacted less than those who need more support. Those children with parents who read with them and support them with homework and actually sit and converse with them won't be impacted as much as a child who gets none of that at home. Other countries allow children to be taken out of school within reason and funnily enough they're not churning out loads of educational failures.

This is ridiculous-workplaces don’t expect 100% attendance, it’s just not practical. People get ill, people have accidents, people have crises-all those ‘life’ things get in the way sometimes.

Children that feel rubbish, have a really sore throat, ache all over, have a banging headache, are coughing and sneezing all over everyone aren’t going to be in the right place to be learning-they are unwell. They should be at home.

Is the children’s commissioner saying they should be in school, feeling awful, spreading germs and delaying their recovery, just because this morning she’s decided it’s a good idea?! Some people really shouldn’t be doing the jobs they are paid a lot of money to do. On what actual medical basis is she basing this on?!

What the point of the the children’s commissioner. It’s just another made up Mickey Mouse job with an overpaid civil servant robbing the taxpayer.

You and me both. Absolute bollocks.

It's ridiculous. I have a dd with disabilities and health problems. Despite what the schools seemed to think, it was impossible to demand that all her hospital appointments had to be outside school time, and she was also too ill to go to school at times. She was very much affected by missing out on the "100% attendance" certificates that the schools gave out with great fanfare. If she'd had a choice, of course she'd have attended 100%. It's an injustice and kids hate that.

Although if the children have 100% attendance, then adults working will have no excuse for leave. Next step, scrap school holidays, so there is no reason to be giving workers 4wks holiday...cynical, moi?

The appointments within school time really boils my piss. The appointments come in the post, if you reschedule you can be waiting even longer and still might be given a school time appointment. Our physios only work until 4pm. We can't even chose a GP, let alone get given an out of school appointment, if you are lucky enough to get through to the receptionist at 8am, then you're grateful for any appointment.

Do these wankers actually live in the real world. I pray to God nobody votes for them again.

@whatsinanameeh my DS's school introduced an end of year party for those with 100% attendance. I complained on the grounds that it is discriminatory, useless as a behaviour modifier as it doesn't reward children for something that is within their control and risks further alienating children who are already having difficulties. Didn't get far, they made noises about understanding my point but it still went ahead. They did water the requirements down a bit and agreed to discount planned medical appointments as absences. Illnesses and hospital admissions are still a strike though .

@HobnobsChoice DS's school is in a "deprived" area and there are children who are regularly late and arrive looking bedraggled. Im guessing a lot are just absent too if their parents are too hung over to get them up (I'm not saying substance issues are unique to poorer people but middle class and above can probably throw money at childcare etc to hide it better). These children's situation is totally out of their control isn't it which is why I disagree with attendance parties as already marginalised families are pushed further out when they need help and support. If you happen to be the one who got 100% then you are not deprived by the absence of these rewards, you are already blessed with both health and a supportive and stable family with no adverse events.

@Rockfordpeach ah yes, the kids who are sent in with the bloody soldiering on attitude so that they can make others sick. Then the cause of the problem gets rewarded while the victim misses out. My DS used to be hospitalised by chest issues that were often from "just a cold".

I dunno, Nick Gibb's suggested solution was that parents sent their kids in when they have a cold, Gillian Keegan's suggestion was that headteachers drive around to an absentee's house and pick them up.

They seem to think the problem is parents not being arsed to send their kids to school.

gnashingnarcissisticweirdos is the best.

That'll get me through INSET 😀

Gillian Keegan's suggestion was that headteachers drive around to an absentee's house and pick them up.

Do you think she tried that when Nadine Dorries didn't show up in parliament for god knows how long?

Wonder what the Commissioner's own sickness absence record looks like?
Also looking forward to getting the additional money she must be going to give to my school to manage this, particularly for SEND kids.

Thanks. Many pretty logical and sensible comments. Another thing to note just on covid alone is the increase or onset of mental health issues and behavioural disorders that can occur following a covid infection. More kids, teachers, parents and their families with long covid isn't going to help education or wellbeing, along with the financial fallout from actively pushing more people into being unable to work or attend school.

With all the messaging on absences, why don't people like the children's commissioner and education sec mention a hugely significant reason is due to sickness - address the ethos and environment where so much sickness is spread instead!

Many kids were screwed in lockdown. Many also thrived and then some of those struggled when faced with the school environment again (especially those who were used to masking how they felt). This needs careful and sensitive managing, not a bulldozer approach.

Minor funding has (rightfully) been targeted at those most needing help to catch up post lockdown - however, limited resources and ridiculously overstretched teachers mean that those kids surpassing targets are not challenged - they tick a target box so can be left to coast. Teachers have roughly 10 minutes per pupil per school day - what option do they have?

Help teacher retention too - stop slating and overburdening them and start properly valuing them! That will help education too.

Even in the posh independent school I used to teach in (which had rather high levels of absence), once you'd discounted the term time holidaying, there was a strong correlation between SEN and absence.

It's the SEN (and sickness) that needs support, not the attendance, which is just a symptom.

Also the curriculum of course, because why come in if you have little interest in what you're learning?

I am not going to teach my kids the wonder of dosing yourself up with half the contents of Boots to get through a day at school where they learn nothing because they feel like shit and just make half the class ill. I'm also not going to send my kids in ill so non-medically qualified school office staff and teachers can make the judgement call if they're too unwell to be in school - since when the fuck did that become a sensible or acceptable extension to the job description anyway?!

They don't know my kids like I do - DD2 in particular is incredibly stoic and has a pain threshold that is utterly off the scale - and will not make a fuss about anything, and it's incredibly easy to misjudge just how unwell she is without that knowledge, and while that's relatively OK in a tiny primary school where the information can be communicated with some degree of efficiency - it's not going to be as easy in a large secondary school. With DD1 it's easier - if she stops talking = worry!

And I don't have 100% attendance at work - because we get told to get the fuck home and not come back until we're well if we go in when ill (rightly so). So why is it that something that most adults will not attain has become somehow an acceptable demand for children anyway?

As for Heads driving round to houses - that would egg absence on in DD1's cohort - they think the Head is massively cool cos he's got a nice car (and the Head does NOT revel in this limited status of cool points at ALL!) and they'd all try to stay off school to get a ride in it. Thankfully in our primary the most attendance enforcement that goes on is you get one letter... no one has apparently reached the second letter point in the time we've been at the school. Minimal fucks are given about term time holidays for generally good attenders either - it's quite refreshing as an approach considering some of the local schools tried demanding GP letters for one day of absence at one time (that demand lasted about as long as it took for the GP surgery to find out what they were doing and read the riot act)!

It’s disgraceful that these people have the power and platform to spout this nonsense. This is why schools have to push for attendance, which then gets everyone’s backs up.

I honestly don't know why English parents/carers put up with this obsession with attendance. It's not a thing here in NI (within reason obv) and in Ireland everyone who can afford it takes their kids out during term time for holidays. The principal wishes them a lovely time..... Both have great educational outcomes better than England. There are much greater factors influencing 'success' than attendance. And then rewarding children for perfect attendance when 99% of the time not attending is completely out of their hands. Madness !

Such a ridiculous plan.

We have a family member at private school (selected due to unmet SEN needs) and they have no fines for term-time holidays, though they often won’t need to take them as they get much longer holiday anyway and can go when it’s cheaper. (Their school days are no longer than ours-unless you pay for after school club-so the argument about that balancing it all out doesn’t work there).

They also have no fines for absence, no mention of 100% attendance and if they’re ill, there is no pressure to bring them in if they are feeling horrible.

I wonder if any Tory MP or children’s commissioner has ever had to make hard decision on ill children or term time holidays with fines hanging over their head-because they go to private school and it’s all allowed anyway. It’s just the rest of us this is aimed at.

I don’t think we want to put up with it. It’s just pushed onto us.

Equalities Act doesn’t seem to apply to children.

Absolute bollocks.

Staff generally don't manage 100% attendance - if you're ill you are ill and should stay at home.