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.

Because so, so many kids aren’t attending school at the moment. The numbers are horrifying. It’s a problem now and it’s going to cause real problems ahead.

So why aren’t they supporting this and finding out the reasons rather than just saying 109% attendance for everyone.

If she really cared, she’d be looking at the reasons why. Not just using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I think Covid has had a massive impact on the level of anxiety for kids going back to school after long periods of lockdown and patchy provision. I know both of mine have struggled to get back into the routine, some of the kids behaviour in school has been off the wall and teaching staff just don’t have the time or skill to know how to deal with it. Throw in pressure to catch up on what was missed and it’s a recipe for disaster.

My DD will never have perfect attendance, she has weekly therapy sessions for a start, a much needed service that was very hard fought for and is provided in school hours. It’s not her fault and she shouldn’t be punished for it.

This.

Mine has ASD. Covid did for her. Where’s the support for that? She has at least 3 appointments a week.

Too unwell to go to school. No support, EHCp declined. That commissioner needs to get her head out of her arse.

If she really cared. She’d be sorting out the issues from Covid.

Nothing wrong with aiming to get all kids attending school regularly. Of course illness can prevent them getting 100% but the government looking for solutions to get children not in education or training back in can only be applauded - my dd who has asd missed a lot of school due to refusal or rather them sending her home at 11am (I always made her go in, no reward of staying at home.) Coming up with innovative solutions like later starts, online school etc also needs to be in the mix. We mustn't give up on young people

I tried to send mine in. She self harmed.

but the government looking for solutions to get children not in education or training back in can only be applauded

They should only be applauded if they are good solutions, not encouraging sick kids in when they should be at home, or expecting headteachers to drive around town picking up truants. And the latest thing is now the Sec of State will be able to directly access school attendance registers. Why?

That their solutions are so shit just shows that they are merely pretending to care. There's no money and no will to actually do anything about it.

Btw my kids school didn't count routine medical appointments as missing school for attendance purposes, they still got their certificate and trip to Alton Towers. Also as long as the registered in the morning it was counted for the day even if they only made it to 11am in my DD's case (thankfully very understanding employer, thank goodness)

I agree with you OP and also agree with the PPs. It’s complete nonsense to think that 100% attendance by every child can be achieved. I was a teacher and the focus on pupils attendance at all costs used to do my head in and that was years ago. I think if I had to spend one day in a school now my head would probably explode!

Coming up with innovative solutions like later starts, online school etc also needs to be in the mix. We mustn't give up on young people

Forcing children into a school that is either unable or unwilling to meet their needs is very much giving up on children because it sacrifices their wellbeing for the sake or a tick in a box. There are lots of things schools can put in place that aren’t particularly innovative but require flexibility, knowledge and time - which costs money, which is exactly what the government isn’t prepared to give in any meaningful way.

They’ve mainstreamed SEN/ASN children into schools that aren’t equipped for them, that don’t have the ability to adjust their teaching style, that won’t or can’t put things in place to lower their anxiety levels and expect kids to turn up day after day to what is a hostile environment for them. I wouldn’t do it as an adult, I have no expectation that my children, who have considerably fewer coping strategies than I do, put themselves in that position.

@noblegiraffe I totally agree with you. Maybe the Secretary of State after accessing the school attendance registers will pop round to have a word with the parents. Utterly pathetic!

Its actually pathetic to seek 100% attendance. 1. MPs don't have this, 2. Teachers don't, TAs don't.

LIFE happens
Also, it's not about inclusion. Any child with a chronic health complaint will have a necessary appointment.

If they set a realistic goal such as 95% then yes would probably be achievable. Everyone get ill sometimes it's just life. My child has one hospital appointment every four week. This needs a full day off from school so I understand

Well said. This is what’s at the base of it all.

@Jellycatspyjamas well said👏.

The majority of poor attendees are SEND. The reasons why this happens are what need addressing. Forcing them in isn’t the answer.

Providing them with suitable low arousal safe working environment is what they need. And that isn’t being addressed.

So imo the person who ‘speaks’ for our children is shit. What an amzong advocat she is.😒

They do know the cause. It's illness driven by COVID infection.

The government website states "Both overall and persistent absence rates have been driven by illness during the 2022/23 academic year...Although it decreased following the Autumn term, illness absence (which includes positive COVID cases) remained higher than pre-pandemic levels, at 3.7% during Spring term compared with around 2.5% pre-pandemic."

This is what we get from a government that refuses to invest in clean air in schools and instead expects kids to suck up constant infection with COVID, which decreases our immunity and leads to a cycle of illness. It doesn't have to be this way. We as parents should be insisting on ventilation, HRPA filtration, and keeping sick.kids out of school instead of forcing them in to infect everyone else.

explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-attendance-in-schools/2023-week-20

That’s not the only cause. Lockdown hammered the mental health of school students.

My daughter sees CAHMs, a psychiatrist and a pyschologist. They are overloaded with kids suffereing from lockdown. 40% of referrals relate to it.

And there’s no staff to deal with it. So it’s dragging on and on.

They do know the cause. It's illness driven by COVID infection.

Some of it is. Some of it is a huge increase in mental health issues.

Some of it is a huge increase in poverty.

This graph is the increase in absence in Y11 - you can see that disadvantaged kids are disproportionately impacted.

Some of it is a huge increase in poverty.

I think this is so overlooked because the assumption is that parents living in poverty get help with the cost of the school day, but there’s a huge increase in families who were just about coping now not managing. The school bus service here is £8 per week, school lunch costs £15 per week so effectively £100 a month before you think about uniforms, school equipment etc. Many families don’t qualify for FSM and don’t qualify under distance rules (which have recently extended) for school transport. I know some families where high school kids are kept home from school to provide childcare for pre-schooler so their mum can work, because she can’t afford childcare and needs the income.

Peoples lives have become harder, and some folk have been tipped into a type of poverty where they don’t get state support, but can’t afford daily life. Not in a “I can’t go to Starbucks” kind of way, in an I can’t feed my kids kind of way.

Yes 🙌 to clean air in schools to PP!

One of my bugbears with illness is it's like it's not allowed to be officially mentioned as a reason when officials talk about school attendance, even though a significant amount of absence is due to it.

Cost to parents that have fallen through the cracks financially of sending kids to school is very sad. This is something that schools/PTA/councils could have some discretion in in helping out? Our school let parents sponsor school meals for other kids - obviously it was anonymous so we had no idea which kids needed the support. Sign of the times that this is a thing.



I tried to post this graphic I saw to show how absurd the not mentioning illness thing is

Yes, the Commissioner is talking bollocks. Not only for all the reasons given, but because the SEN system is so badly funded, local authorities can't afford to comply with their statutory obligations, and there is no proper mechanism for forcing them to do so.

All of which means that, say, a child with ASD and severe anxiety doesn't get support in school, gets ever more anxious and less and less able to cope. Ultimately they become unable to go into school, or start having massive meltdowns and get excluded. All of it totally avoidable if the law was actually enforced and proper funding was in place. The problems of children with mental health problems being unable to cope in school has been increasing ever since lockdown.

I haven't seen anything from the Commissioner about how she proposes to address this issue.