To think there have to be some clearer reasons for the rise in school attendance problems?

[FloorWipes]

Inspired by this article https://unherd.com/2024/02/the-tragedy-of-britains-school-refusers/

How specifically has the pandemic affected things? Why is the environment so inhospitable to the neurodivergent?

I think there were huge issues before and a lot of children and adults found their mental health improved massively not having to go to school/work or being able to WFH and didn't want to return.

My dd goes to a specialist provision school as shes autistic. It's very small, 7 children to a class. Lots of support staff. Shorter school day.

My dd previously was a school refuser. The secondary that she was allocated (we didn't get our first choice) was huge. Over 30 in a class, lots of noise, chaos and change. So obviously she wasn't going to cope. In fact she ended up in a mental health crisis.

Nearly every single parent I have talked to in our schools parent group has the same story. An education system who wants our children in mainstream that they cannot cope with. My own dd was out of education for 18 months before we finally got a placement in this wonderful school.

Unfortunately once again budget cuts are effecting this school and the only way the education authority are willing to keep funding this specialist provision is if it increases class sizes. Defeating the whole object.

There's just too many children packed into schools with not enough staff, too much staff turnover, not enough pastoral or sen care and if your kid isn't a tough cookie who can cope well they just get chewed up and spat out.

I feel the effect of the pandemic has been hugely underestimated when it comes to kids mental health. I don't feel the same, can completely understand why many kids don't. Imagine going from everyday life to suddenly being at home, separated from friends, people talking about covid, hospitals, dying - hard enough for adults let alone kids. My teen DS has never been the same. Actually said to me 'why worry about school because we will all just get old and die' - he was never like this before. He tells me many of the kids have been really disruptive and lots of teachers left and are still leaving - covid turned the world upside down. Plus DH and me both had covid in 2020, DH had life threatening side effects. And we expect kids to go back to school as if nothing happened.... I wish I knew how we could help. I fear for DS future, I don't know if he'll ever hold down a job
..

Tell me you know nothing about the current state of education without telling me you know nothing about it 🙄

’wishy washy parenting’ 😂

You’re very late to this conversation. Haven’t you read the hundreds of other threads on this exact topic in recent months/years? I suggest you do before you post such unfounded statements.

Yeah or gentle parenting!

My dd self harmed when we pushed her in. We were acting on advice from school and other professionals.

She was still crying the other night about a certain English teacher who made her answer questions when she is selective mute. Despite being told not to, and in fact ramped up the question asking. A year later.

Thats fuck all to do with gentle parenting.

One of my friends DD has autism and extreme anxiety. Huge difficulties in communicating and the school couldnt meet her needs. She was very ill with the stress of it all and now goes to alternative schooling. Missed a lot of school prior and really suffered.

Another friend cba and lets her spoilt daughter dictate everything. Shes a princess so if she doesnt want to go, she doesnt. Mum doesn't work and is very much of the opinion that pjama days with mum are just as important as school cos of 'mental health'.

It really is this. I have a school refuser, started with a breakdown self harm and lead to an ASD and ADHA diagnosis. But once we understood we were able to intervene. She is currently doing well in mainstream school again. ( it goes up and down sometimes for months at a time) the school have been fantastic.

but there are people who can’t be arsed to argue and do everything their children say.

Sometimes it used to take almost 2 hours to get her into school and sometimes we didn’t even make it out the door, but I never stopped trying and now her mental health is better , she is better. If I had allowed her to stop going to school completely during her bad times , she never would have gone again I don’t suppose and her future would look very different.

School environments are tough. As teaching methods have improved and become more rigorous, it leaves some students floundering. Its very much needs being unmet and Covid exacerbated it. If it’s safer, happier and less stressful at home-why wouldn’t you refuse?

SEN and mental health are paid lip service to. Schools say they are inclusive without any real adaptations. There is also a huge rise in on site truancy! Hordes of kids wandering/ in toilets/ hanging about because the curriculum is boring/hard. Bring back vocational courses! Bring back some fun. Who’s going to work hard and behave to then get a selection of grade 2’s ☹️

School can be shit. For a myriad of reasons. And each school might have a different set of reasons why. I think it's unhelpful to think of schools as a homogenous mass. Different schools will have different issues, and different combinations of issues.

From dirty toilets, to rules around coats, lunch halls that aren't big enough so children skip meals, PE can be brutal, the emphasis on achieving grades, GCSE curriculum and the NC can be boring, poor pastoral care, jaded teachers, not enough teachers, not enough books, bullying, and years of under funding and meddling in the way schools are run, to the catchment area, the journey to and from school, not enough support for children with SEN, noisy classrooms, pushy corridors, engineering/art/pick a subject rooms that can't be used, overcrowded classes, the list of possibilities is endless.

Teaching is a profession that is demonised, under valued and under paid.

Ministers making huge general decisions that have never sat in a state classroom.

We never seem to ask teachers what would work. Largely because the answers wouldn't be popular (money! Schools need money!).

Plus, for some kids, what's the point? Going somewhere every day that doesn't inspire them, where they get in trouble for having the wrong shoes, or get bullied, or can't use the toilets, or can't see how algebra will ever serve them in adulthood. They won't get a clutch of decent grades, they end up in a minumin wage job at best, and school (in their eyes) is a hot bed of shouting, boredom and disappointment (although it could be any reasons, not just these ones!) And then they have kids and so the cycle is repeated.

We need schools to be funded, headteachers who have autonomy and control of their budgets, teachers who are supported and inspired and valued. And parents to be on side. Parents who support the school, who see the community in school, who see that their kids truly benefit from school (and for plenty of kids, with or without SEN, this just isn't the case).

I think blaming parents or pupils as lazy is such an easy get out clause, and completely misses the point.

Someone in government needs to care. And to pay up and to think beyond a 5 year term. And to take advice from teachers, spend time in schools. And stop demonising and polarising schools and parents.

Ooh, that felt good to say it all!

I agree that this is a huge underestimated part of the problem.

The effects of the pandemic are not talked about enough. I think in the future we will look back on it in the same way that we look back in World War 2 in the sense that it irrevocably changed things.
Children particularly were affected badly. They were expected to just yo-yo in and out of school, & when they were in deal with things like sitting apart from other children, the 2 metre rule, sitting facing the front suddenly after decades of sitting in groups, talk of death and illness were everywhere, they were expected to just crack on and deal with the most bizarre of situations. It was a form of trauma for ALL of us including and especially children.

well you are completely misunderstanding me. Where have I said that contagion is easy for parents to deal with, or truanting, or something that can be overcome with "toughness".

It is like suicide contagion, no one says suicide isn't real just because it is contagious. School refusal is also contagious, in that there are students who would never have got it unless they had heard of someone else doing it - like no one commits suicide unless they have heard of someone else doing it.

That doesn't mean the issues causing that behaviour are not real.

The issues causing what you call "good old fashioned truanting" are also real, and these children also need attention, care and support.

But the question was why has school absence risen - the answer is partly contagion - students develop school refusal after hearing that this behaviour exists in many cases. So if they had not heard, they would still be in school. They might be distressed, traumatised, and in a state of shock so deep that learning is impossible, but they would be in school, and not on the absence statistics, which is what this thread is about.

As to your question about whether fines etc have an affect on attendance, yes in my experience they do have a massive effect. But do they have an effect on the amount of learning happening is a different question altogether. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.

For example , I have had a boy in my class who has told me out right he is in the room to prevent his parents being taken to court. However, he would not pick up a pen and any reading material put down in front of him was torn up on principle. He kept this up for several years. Clearly force was not the way to go with this boy, who is now in prison.

On the other hand, I have known children forced back in by fines, and have gradually got more engaged, and have left well qualified and got on with life - some now earning much more than me!

@Youcannotbeseriousreally but can I ask, what was happening on those days where it took two hours? We're you arguing? Threatening? What made her, at the end of the two hours, be persuaded to go in? And do you work? One of the most difficult things I found when dealing with this for a mercifully brief period was that I had to be at work for 8.30 (teacher). If I'm not there, someone else has to cover, I can't just let emails pile up, so standing about persuading for two hours wasn't an option. I had to make the call by 8 whether or not they were going to make it in that day.

The mental health thing is laughable. I really believe that the school system is having such a negative impact on young people that it's one of the main causes for their poor mental health.

As far as I'm concerned, the numbers for school refusal/non attendance speak for themselves. Don't get me wrong, some will only turn up when they fancy but I think it's more really just cannot face the dire environments that many schools have turned into. The system is broken.

Ed psych here.

1.Gove made the curriculum way harder and removed almost all coursework = highly pressured curriculum

1. Academy chains with "zero tolerance" behaviour approaches and greatly limited LA oversight and power
2. Ofsted and the inspection regime being highly results oriented and rather than support and nurture oriented
3. Covid broke the routine

The Tories' education policies have been SO damaging.

There is a link between autism and persistant absence. Autistic children are much more likely to be absent but this link predates the pandemic. Around a third of autistic children are persistant absentees.

In terms of the pandemic increasing numbers I would suggest that more parents now work from home so can facilitate absence and more children realised that not going in was a thing.

I also have seen school budgets decimated over the last 10 years, and this does mean far less support in school. Schools are also increasingly data and target driven which puts pressure that maybe wasnt there before.

Finally, i think there has been parental awareness of the damage you can cause an autistic child by forcing them in to unsuitable provision. Parents do have support groups and access to charities like 'not fine in school' where they can access information about autistic burnout and how to prevent it.

Schools particularly high schools don't sound like a nice environment to be in. No wonder some children just can't deal with it. So many rules for no reason particularly uniform, no access to bathrooms, and nothing done about bullying.

That wasn’t my experience as a secondary school teacher.

All our EBSA were SEND. I worked in a very academic school where maybe truanting was less. But it was always SEND kids who were the long term absent. I’ve never seen any evidence of contagion.

@notknowledgeable thank you for explaining. I do get what you mean but one might argue that understanding that it's ok to express that an environment is intolerable for you is actually a good thing. Until schools become places where ND kids (and there's a huge correlation) can feel safe, supported, heard and accommodated, it's ridiculous to think that that fines or berating to just get the bum on a seat at all costs is the answer. I'm also a teacher by the way.

This is correct.

We all need to start looking at the dysfunctional environment we are putting our children in before labelling the children themselves as dysfunctional!! School itself is the problem. I’m just glad I left teaching and took my DC with me. Couldn’t be part of this any longer.

Number 2 - definitely! It's all about statistics- attendance rules ! Top of the list should be the wellbeing of the student, if they feel happy and supported, they are mote likely to want to go in and more likely to want to learn - school is a very scary place for various reasons for many kids now

Possible reasons
Schools are busy and demanding environments. They are difficult places for ND kids. There are definitely less TAs. Schools have more pastoral support than ever before but as demand has risen they cannot keep up. More send in mainstream schools also means less support for those without EHCPs. Poor behaviour means that schools are stricter places so that students who want to learn can. Some nd students struggle with stricter rules. Some prefer them as they make school safer.

There is lots of pressure to have lots of friends and to be like everyone else in your tribe. Any issues with friendship and acceptance have huge impacts on kids now. A social problem can trigger a refusal to come to school.

Everyone talks extensively about teen anxiety. This means that everyone expects teens to be anxious and worries will often be defined as having anxiety. This includes parents, teachers and kids themselves.

There is an element of contagion. If you have one child self harming in a social group. You sometimes then find others start doing the same.

Once a child starts on a part time table or missing certain lessons or only coming in for lunch etc, things sometimes escalate.

Parents expect schools to provide mental health support such as counselling and safe spaces with pastoral support and adaptations such as 1.1 or small group teaching that the schools cannot staff or pay for. This puts schools and parents into conflict. Parent then stops working to send in child as they think school has failed them.
Child is then fully out of school.

It is the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with.

Mainly negotiating, a staff member would meet us at a separate entrance, there was never shouting but often tears. We’d talk through the steps of the day, which lessons she would go to and which ones she’d stay with the pastoral team etc. what her worries were of the day. We soon learnt that reduced timetables had little impact because you still had to go through the going then to only stay a few hours was pointless and 99% of the time she coped well once she was there.

I work from home and in the public sector. My boss and director were very supportive and accommodating and I work flexi time anyway so I just made the time up in the evenings and weekends. My team helped me cover meetings I missed , I was lucky to be able to manage my calendar so nothing before 10am but understand lots of people don’t have that flex. Really though, nothing was more important to me than her future, work could wait.

when it was really bad I took 6 weeks off unpaid ( for my own mental health too tbh because I was at breaking point by then) so that took away the work stress and guilt.

There is an element of contagion. If you have one child self harming in a social group. You sometimes then find others start doing the same

There is contagion in this type of thing. I’ve never seen it in school refusal though.

My DH and I are both teachers. Our Y9 daughter has terrible difficulty attending school due to anxiety. We're certainly not gentle parents who work from home and just let our DD stay off whenever she pleases. It's an extremely stressful situation and those who haven't been through it and seen their child in huge distress and fear about going into school are not in any position to comment on the reasons for it happening.

Our daughter was happy at primary school, albeit quiet, and went in without any issues. She is bright, and predicted Grade 9s. We had high aspirations for her. Now we just hope she'll manage to get any GCSEs at all. School have made a few adjustments for her such as allowing her to use the pastoral room, but this just means she sits there half the day, learning nothing. We had to attend an options evening at the school this week and I could see for myself how my DD changes when she is in the school environment and how hard it was for her. She was visibly very anxious and couldn't say a word while she was there.

We can't quite get to the reasons behind it but I think it's a lot to do with the environment. Her school has a lot of very strict (sometimes petty) rules. Teachers are strict and shout a lot - it's hard to recruit teachers and frankly there are many people in the job who are there because its impossible to find anyone better . There are huge amounts of cover sessions. Her school has very long lessons and short breaktimes to minimise the possibility of bad behaviour during transitions. The curriculum changes made by Gove means learning is extremely dull. Schools are underfunded and cannot afford the SEN or pastoral staff to adequately support students' needs. My daughter is quiet and not disruptive so nobody does much to help her, even though she's barely accessing an education.

I hope there will soon be a new government who will make some much needed changes to education. It will all come too late to help my DD though.