Government attendance campaign

[D3LAN3Y]

Firstly I apologise if this thread has already been done. I haven't seen one.

AIBU to think the government's new campaign to improve attendance has totally missed the mark? "Moments matter, attendance counts".... that one.

I first stumbled upon a picture of a happy smiley child running around with a speech bubble saying some nonsense about him having a running nose but look at him now. As if having an NHS logo on the right hand corner magically means this child is cured of whatever ailment he had that morning, his parents are obviously dimwits and he should attend school no matter what.

All that matters to schools seem to be their statistics. Not childrens physical or mental well being. What about the teachers teaching them? What about their class mates? What about vulnerable families? What about SEN families with no provisions?

As parents do you think the government need to toughen attendance? What reforms would help?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-national-drive-to-improve-school-attendance

No the middle one has been created by clever people on the net to take the piss out of Education Secretary Gillian Keegan.
It was when SEND funding was being debated in parliament and hardly anyone turned up.

When my DS’ were at still at school, before COVID, all parents were sent emails, saying if they have a headache, or a cold, give them paracetamol and send them into school.

Worth a reminder that the Government didn't want to close schools. The teaching unions went ape and said it wouldn't be safe for their staff, backed strongly by Labour. It was all the Government could do to organise a compromise where children of key workers and certain other individuals would still be taken, otherwise there would have been strikes and the schools shut anyway. People have short memories.

Not in real terms. Cash versus value is important when making this claim. In education, for example, funding per pupil in real terms (i.e. what the money can actually buy) is still below the 2010 levels of spending.

A higher sum is being spent but given the shifting value of money and changing number of users in the system, that actually covers noticeably less.

So it seems like the government assumed that children go to school because their parents make them go to school. In actual fact, it seems children only go to school if they want to go to school, and most parents will not (or cannot), in fact, make their child go to school. I'm not sure I'm entirely on board with that approach but it is what it is, and since Covid, many children have developed mental health issues and anxiety and do not want to go to school, so they aren't going.

If they actual wanted to solve the attendance issue, they need to:

1. Stop making schools resemble prisons. Children do not want to go anywhere where they are put in isolation for having the wrong colour stitching on their shoes, forbidden from accessing the toilet, shouted at for keeping their coat on when it's cold or put in detention because they forgot their pencil case. You can maybe take this disciplinarian approach when the children are being forced to be there, but if they are not, they won't come to be treated like that.
2. Invest properly in child mental health services.

Just telling parents to make their child go to school isn't it.

Bobcat246 you are so right. It was teachers themselves, like the weird daffodil crowd on here, who desperately wanted to be off for as long as possible! Longer than anyone else. On full wages. Actually arguing that they would be more at risk than an intensive care nurse in a covid ward.

I know I'm missing the point, but if I look back on photos of myself at school I see a smiling girl, but know full well that the smiles were faked to cover up what I was going through. It's only an advert but it kind of makes me sad that these kids should be wrapped up warm at home and they've been made to go to school.

It is tricky - I agree the govt campaign is misguided at best, but equally it could be argued that Covid showed how important it is for kids to be at school - how much they missed through not being there.

I agree that the trust between govt, schools and parents is gone though. That needs repairing before campaigns about attendance are worth anything. Plus in the majority of cases parents know their kids and when they’re ill - they likely don’t want to keep them off if they can help it and don’t need added pressure.

Those minority of parents who are abusing their kids won’t be listening to a poster anyway - and the Covid lockdowns let those kids down most of all.

To get higher economic growth and higher GDP per capita, four things need to happen. Lower energy costs for business, higher productivity and lower taxation and better infrastructure.

We need more home grown energy now, more oil production rather than importing oil. The follow that with a nuclear power expansion using the modular nuclear reactors produced at home by the likes of Rolls Royce which comes online within the next 5 or so years. none of those things need to cost the taxpayer.

We need more inward investment into tech and finance. People don’t like it but finance is the backbone of this ailing economy. We need less regulation and more inward investment. Less regulation does not necessarily mean loose controls, it means getting regulators to enforce the small amount of regulation you put in place. The regulators in this country are useless, much like government and civil service in general. So more regulation becomes a proxy for better enforcement.

Infrastructure is where the state should spend. Roads, tunnels, bridges. Give Heathrow its third runway and make it the hub of global air travel, given the location of London. Build a hyperloop from London to Leeds. Although looking at the shitshow HS2, our civil servants can’t run a bath, let alone build the hyperloop. And in case the corrupt government would probably steal the funds like they did with HS2.

Give bigger tax breaks for automation investment. It raises productivity. Pays for itself in no time.

Repeating soundbites like we need better public services does nothing. You can’t magic up better public services. You have to produce stuff to pay for it. You need a vibrant economy. Or else you just print, borrow and tax to spend. And look how that turned out in the last 25 years.

Unfortunately, we are led by donkeys and corrupt thickos. None of this will happen, even though it’s not rocket science. It’s just takes political will.

Thats what you get with a rapidly growing population due to inward migration and declining productivity and contribution.

Yes and add to that ‘public spending’ isn’t and can’t be a set figure that never changes as it has to respond to need!

ageing population
covid NHS backlogs
record numbers of kids coming into care
schools struggling to pay rising costs

school cut support staff first - leaving kids with support needs cut adrift - attendance is a huge issue that has lifelong impact but kids need support as do families - which requires staff

Totally with you on that one @Bobcat246 I remember when the guidance changed and said that schools could open for certain year groups. I posted on here that the Headteacher wasn't following the guidance and refused to take those classes back (academy trust) and I got my arse handed to me on a plate.

Don't be silly. Schools shut as there would not have been enough staff there to keep them open! Don't you remember isolating for two weeks because of a contact? You can't safely send children into schools that don't have enough adults in them.
But, never miss an opportunity.

Funnily enough I'm sat in the doctors waiting room and there's a couple who seem to be of retirement age complaining about how busy it is because of all the school children.

Funny how they don't realise the pressure schools put on parents to make appointments outside of school hours.

I mention they seem to be of retirement age as presumably they have somewhat more flexibility in when they attend an appointment.

That's an odd claim. Migration hasn't been the driving force for the decreasing value of money (that's more connected to the mismanagement of our economy) and the migrant population is, on average, a net contributor to the treasury so an increase in migration would have given the government more money to spend on public services.

You seem to have forgotten Labour wanted schools to reopen before pubs.

The government prioritised pubs.

It's fucking infuriating!

I worked for 8 years at our primary and now i have youngest DD there (yr5). So I KNOW they are all reasonable people and that the letters are generated in response to government instruction - but bugger me, when they know damn well that DD has been throwing up and that the amount of time she's had to have off is because of us following THEIR OWN 48 hour rule, it's so irritating to get the letters about how she's going to fail in life because her attendance is sooooooo looooooow.

OK they don't actually say that specifically, but when you've gone from having 100% attendance for most of the year to having letters about 5 days off for throwing up it's galling.

Schools know very well which families are in need of support and which are just a run of genuine illnesses. And support, by the way, is not in my opinion, best provided with threatening letters!

That's not what all the arguments against keeping schools open or re-opening them were about on mumsnet from teachers at the time. And some countries didn't close them at all. Not that silly or impossible.

That was for crispsandwichrock

I keep reading from the school and govt about all the links between academic performance and attendance. What they fail to show however, is any evidence that links children turning up to school with headaches, tummy pain, no sleep etc with academic performance. Where is the proof that a bum in a seat is enough?! Its not! And I wouldn’t go to work feeling like that, I certainly wouldn’t expect young children to sit, learn, behave themselves feeling that crap.
Oh and then when they do go in everyone catches it and more kids and staff are off sick and it totally pisses on any lessons learnt from covid!

Huh? That's not even close to what happened.

It’s annoying. My DD’s attendance was below 70% 2yrs in a row, but she wasn’t well and it was what it was. She’s year 11 now and predicted all 8’s and mainly 9’s. Fell behind in covid and still won’t attend if home learning (had a week recently due to electricity outages) and so it’s under 90% but she learns more at home as she’s a self learner (since year 10). Granted not every kid is like that but she was sick and wasn’t much I could do to change it, especially as most of the time I took her to school and they sent her home due to sickness

Let the local authorities sort the shite sen support out and my child's attendance would improve 🤙
Until then thanks I'm not interested just like the schools ain't interested in helping my child 🤷‍♀️

Someone who has deliberately qualified in treating people with infectious illnesses working in full PPE is not the same as someone who has no medical training, was provided with no PPE and who did not, at any point, volunteer to risk death or illness in the course of their duties. Teachers do not have to put their lives at risk because you don't like looking after your own kids.

Yeah yeah. That old chestnut! The women who worked in my local Spar had to 'risk death'. It was months before anyone even turned up to nail a piece of perspex up in front of them. But then I suppose they didn't have white collar jobs that could be done from home, by professional IT-savvy people who knew how to make a Teams call....oh no hang on a minute, teachers didn't know how to do that either, did they? Apparently. So they couldn't deliver live lessons. So it wasn't a job that could be done from home. So they did fuck all. Didn't they?