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?

@BibbleandSqwauk

Has it right on the nose

No one chooses this. Or if they do it's a tiny tiny minority.
Most parents want their child to be able to do well and have a friendship group and get out in the world. Why would we choose this????

Good summary, I think.

We had major issues with my younger daughter and school avoidance.

She had a mental health breakdown in the first lockdown so Covid certainly exacerbated it, but she was having issues pre-covid.

IMO, mainly down to unmet needs and horrendous (diagnosed) social anxiety. She is autistic, severely dyslexic and has some other stuff going on as well.

• Her pupil passport/reasonable adjustments being ignored/not followed
• GCSEs being wholly unsuited to her style of learning - she’s doing a level 3 Diploma at college now and is thriving
• Sensory issues - strict adherence to an uncomfortable school uniform with no consideration for pupils like DD with sensory needs. Not being allowed to use ear plugs/ear defenders, despite them being included in her pupil passport and reasonable adjustments. Having fidget toys/stress balls confiscated, again, despite them being included in her pupil passport and reasonable adjustments.
• Over the top rules and strict adherence to the rules. DD thrives on rules and routine, however, some of the rules introduced by the school were quite mad and contradictory- for example, if you followed rule X, you inadvertently broke rule Y. She found it impossible to cope with. She hates getting into trouble and just couldn’t brush off a behaviour point - it would keep her awake half the night worrying about it.

Covid came along and she had a mental health breakdown, once school re-opened getting her back in for her final year was nigh-on impossible.

Shes now at college, it’s more relaxed, she can dress comfortably, she can wear her earplugs, after a bit of a bumpy start they follow her reasonable adjustments, she’s doing a different type of qualification (level 3 diploma) that’s more suited to her style of learning and she’s thriving - distinctions in all her work.

@Antsinmypantsneedtodance but that would be a logistical nightmare to manage 1500 kids doing that and also delivering meaningful education in school.

Whst is needed are far smaller schools but this has a huge resource implication. And no one wants their taxes raised 🙁.

@HeBeaverandSheBeaver its not a question for some parents of “choosing” it. There are a small but not insignificant number of children who come from very chaotic and dysfunctional backgrounds where parents have a very challenging relationship with schools and these children are also swept up in the school absence stats. It’s not solely about ND children being badly failed sadly 🙁.

I agree imagine thinking your grandparents may die or even your parents. The stress on the psych of some kids is horrendous. Yes a lot coped but at a young age age your world turned upside down hearing people dying course it will have an affect. That's without the effect of covid itself and lockdowns.

@ShareTheDuvet with respect, what you're talking about is a million miles from EBSA. A child who would sooner be elsewhere but "doesn't mind going" is like the holy grail for parents dealing with EBSA.

I teach secondary. It's actually the work of a moment to pop the PowerPoint I'm using in class onto a chat message for an absent pupil, or upload everything to the Team, which I often do anyway so all have access to materials. Flexible teaching like that is not so unachievable and actually, were there the funding and the will, a member of admin staff could be used to collate resources each week for each pupil identified as persistently absent but wanting to learn, like my own child was, and have them available for collection at reception if internet access was an issue. I was told anything like this was "normalising and encouraging" absence. They'd rather she sat at home staring into space...because this came alongside the advice to remove all screens, pets, heating and nice food. 🙄

@BibbleandSqwauk apologies, I’m confused about which point you’re talking about? It was my own son who I said doesn’t mind going to school - I wasn’t beginning to compare that to EBSA! That would be ridiculous.

The flexi schooling the PP was talking about was far more than “sticking a PowerPoint on an email”, much more complex. But please don’t pretend I was saying that not liking school is the same as EBSA - that’s so far from what I said and quite offensive.

Terminology has changed too

I would consider myself to be a school refuser. I was labelled a bad kid who bunked off back in the 90s

It's a huge problem, I'm going through it with my autistic dd and the school unable to meet her needs and lack of specialist schools. The Facebook page 'not fine in school' with £50k members and growing highlights this. It needs to publicised in the mainstream media. We need a post office style drama on tv to highlight the problem.

The break in the routine when we were in and out of restrictions cannot be understated. The power that "this is what happens on X day" has is massive. You lose that routine and it can be really difficult to get that impetus back - especially for families where school is a difficult place anyway, or people living more chaotic lives, or also the "wishy-washy" ones who can't face the argument (there - happy I included the wishy-washy very very very small sub quota?!)

The current thing that seems to have started with Michaela and Gove and all that shit to aspire to schools being silent Victorian-style bootcamps where all uniformity and slight resistance is stamped down on... HARD. If you're a kid like DD2 is, with various diagnoses explaining high anxiety and organisational difficulties - and you end up in a school where it's an automatic 30 minute detention for forgetting a ruler... you're completely fucked. You have the anxiety of wanting to follow all the rules, combined with the anxiety of not coping well with changes to your routine and random detentions being landed on you, and then you're wired for it to be incredibly incredibly difficult to meet those standards anyway... you are being set up to fail on multiple different fronts (and bloody hell I hope DD2 gets the school we've listed first on offers day where their solution is a locker provided, mentors from staff to support with building organisational skills, and the approach where she can leave multiple rulers in all her different classrooms)!

And there is an element of respect for teachers being at an all-time low, again, this is largely because of the behaviour of some very obnoxious loud voices during the pandemic. People haven't forgotten the way some rogue branches of teachers' unions referred to kids when schools reopening was being discussed... or the way some individual teachers behaved (such as one that one of my kids had - who literally carried a portable perspex screen around the classroom if she had to go in any proximity to a child). I'll freely admit that that was the point where I decided that I was no longer going to pay the price premium to avoid term-time holidays if required and that since society had viewed my kids' education as something they could stop and start on a whim - I was going to fuck off with them to Centerparcs for a few days mid-May without feeling bad about it (they're still among the highest percentage attenders in the school - so my rebellion was incredibly small!)

And there is the issue with access to diagnostic services for conditions such as ASD and ADHD... and access to child mental health services as a result. DD1 was self-harming briefly and school attempted to refer her for low-level mental health support - rejected because her difficulties may be indicative of ASD... but the waiting list for ASD is 2 1/2 years, and then CAMHS won't touch you in some areas if you're autistic - so where do the neurodivergent kids who are struggling go to access any help? We really seem to have moved to one step short of kicking any kids who don't fit the mould out of the system completely.

I’m not sure why school attendance dropping is a surprise to anyone. Yes the classrooms are more chaotic with fewer teachers and much less supports but you just need to read this forums to see that it’s not just children who have had this change in attitude. Prior to covid probably 90% of workers worked out of the home and now every week there are threads on here, articles in the news about people being incensed they are asked to return to the office x number of days a week.
Adults as well as children have had their attitudes changed to having to attend somewhere. Adults are willing to leave their jobs over being asked to go in 2-3 days a week, not even a full week. It should be no surprise that after the better part of 2 years being schooled at home is acceptable that both children and adults are not seeing in person school attendance as the gold standard any more.

@lollipoprainbow totally agree - it is regularly covered on our local news as we have one particular LA constantly in trouble for it, but I don’t think the vast majority of people who have no experience of the SEN issues around education really understand the complexities of it 🙁. The lack of specialist schools is a nightmare - but I also worry about the variable quality of some of the schools already in existence who think providing for SEN kids is a cash cow and it very much isn’t 😬.

My comment was wishy-washy and I stand by it! Not the majority but there are some feckless parents out there and there's no point pretending there isn't. There must be teachers on here that see it all the time. I have a friend who is a Head of Year in a school in a deprived area and getting the kids to actually attend school is a daily battle because of parental support (or lack of). Hence they pick their battles and behaviour gets ignored and they don't care if they're not in the right uniform because they're just glad they're in school at all.

I'm certainly not saying that it's the majority, and definitely not some of the parents on here who (as I said in my first post) have genuine needs. One of my best friends has a school refuser, and that's not her being wishy-washy, she's had to give up her job as she couldn't work due to it. Her son needed a different school and the LEA were no help so he spent 7 months out of school until they could get him in a suitable school. It was a super stressful time for all of them.

There was an article in a newspaper (Guardian maybe?) that cited some reasons and talked about "ghost children" who vanished from schools and education during the pandemic and are at risk of falling into crime or abuse. However stats also say this isn't a problem just with schools and children as adults also have more sickness absence now since the pandemic.

A couple of things spring out to me.

The article also refers to general attendance, not just ‘refusers’. My best friend has had an issue with her son’s primary school, where they send him home for every little thing, including claiming he had a rash that looked like chickenpox, even though he had already had it. The school also doesn’t record the difference between days when the parents have kept him off and when they have sent him home. I also had a childminder who sent my son home for every little thing, and I have to wonder if this has become worse since covid.

Something else I consider is actions taken regarding bullying. When I was at school, I was still made to attend school when I was being physically bullied. If my children are ever physically bullied once they start school, I wouldn’t hesitate to keep them off school until the issue is properly dealt with.

Yes, ‘broken routine’ is probably a better way of describing it (and I never claimed to be an expert).

I think that adult sickness absences should also be no surprise. We were at one point told to isolate for up to 10 days at the possibility (due to close contact) of covid. I had to do this several times once schools returned due to pupils I teach testing positive, and this was despite a negative test from me.
I actually think it’s not a bad thing and perhaps in the long run we will all benefit from people actually staying off for a day or two when sick rather than dragging themselves in to work and coughing/sneezing over everyone and spreading their bug around.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

Sorry for detailing the thread.

Please could you let me know school where academically able ASD/ADHD can do A levels? Happy for dm. Have been looking nationally with no luck. Desperate. Will move anywhere.

For dd who was unable to attend before covid (hate the term school refuser) I'd say a complete disinterest in her needs and lack of care contributed greatly. She had an EHCP and had thrived in Primary, in Secondary they weren't interested in her need for support as academically she was high achieving and they felt others were more deserving of support despite the EHCP detailing specifically what support they must give.
Pre empting an Ofsted inspection school started enforcing multiple petty rules that dd never broke but the anxiety they induced became unbearable. Until dd was missing lots of days school were unwilling to make even minor adjustments that would have made it easier and were in keeping with the EHCP. When they finally decided they could help it was too late and dd never went back.
She started at an independent specialist just before lockdown and thrived.The school stayed open throughout so she had far less disruption to her schooling than the majority.

What parent in their own mind, apart from those who genuinely chose to HE, want their kids at home?
Most parents need to be at work.
There was a post recently on one of the school attendance forums from a parent who was having to section herself literally, because of the stress of her child not being able to attend school. Like others she had exhausted all avenues. It was heart breaking to read. She was crying out for help, asking how other parents managed having a child out of school, how they dealt with the stress of it all.
To read some of the lazy and ignorant replies on here, people should be ashamed and thank God they haven't had it inflicted on them.
These attitudes are exactly why the attendance figures are what they are. There is no help, understanding or support. It tears families apart, the stress of it all.

I still think a bit part of it is down to parents who are struggling - with physical and mental health, with work and cost of living pressures, just being completely overwhelmed. It's not laziness, it's not being able to cope. A 16 year old in walking distance to school is one thing, but a 6 year old is something different. They need a parent to get them up, get them ready for school, and get them there.

I work in higher education, but we have staff crashing and burning left and right. People are off on long term sickness or working reduced hours (myself included) due to poor physical and mental health, burnout, stress. If parents aren't able to get themselves to work, they are equally going to struggle to get their children to school.

I had a parent who was like this - my mum's burnout/stress/poor mental health/general overwhelm really impacted my school attendance. She wasn't lazy. She was working like 50-60 hours a week, but the school run was just one thing too far after a point. She still managed to work and to get out the door on time and into the office on time and run the household, but she literally couldn't cope with getting me up and ready for school, so she just stopped doing it. I missed nearly a whole year of school (god only knows were SS was or why no one checked on me!). She would just get up and go to work and I'd wake up later alone having missed going to school (school was a good 20 minute drive away, no public transport, so I needed her to drive me there).

I think for some parents who are unwell and overwhelmed, just getting through the day means avoiding the aggro of a battle over getting to school. It may even be necessary if they are to get to work and keep their jobs.

I genuinely think that lockdown traumatised our children - at least for those of us in areas that were locked down for a long time and who didn’t qualify for school places under the key worker exemption.

They were pulled out of school with no warning. Their daily routine and learning was disrupted. They had their entire social network taken away without warning (like being grounded but for a REALLY long time) and an awful lot of their support network taken away too. I know in my children’s case they were also cut off from their family (for almost two years for us due to us living in areas which seemed to take turns being locked down - if it wasn’t us it was them) and had to cope with being ignored most of the day by their parents (because we were working from home, not eligible for furlough due to public sector status). I don’t know about anyone else’s kids but mine also had to deal with two very stressed parents who suddenly had more pressure in their life but no access to their usual support networks or outlets. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown.

For the youngest kids, their development was hugely affected. My smallest was 2 when we went into lockdown and was also in the shielding list. When shielding ended, it took her a long time to adjust to normal situations - she had never experienced a shopping centre or a party - she is still scared of situations where there are lots of kids and noise. She didn’t know what an escalator was.

Kids have been given no time to reflect, grieve and process what they experienced. Their trauma (and the parts of normal development and education they skipped) have not been addressed - they have been expected to act and perform as if they never went through any of this and the pandemic never existed.

Then we have all of the kids who are ill frequently because they are stuck in NHS waiting lists and missed out in routine care for their chronic conditions during the pandemic.

In addition, a lot of schools are implementing this bullshit slant nonsense (usually badly implemented). This is definitely a factor in school refusal.

It is a shitstorm. Locking down schools was the stupidest decision this government ever made. Backed by a population who let themselves be manipulated by fear and social control rather than use their brains.

Hi, it’s Sheffield.

Kenwood academy. It was just amazing.

l cried when l came out from looking round. The child who won’t speak to teachers chatted freely with the deputy head😮

So quiet and calm. They have a meltdown room, where they can just go if the get overwhelmed, they can leave class to make a drink. They take them to a local educational farm for animal therapy. But they all have to take a turn in the cafe and in serving customers ( with support if needed)

https://www.kenwoodacademy.co.uk/page/?title=KS5+Courses+%28Sixth+Form%29&pid=36

@SleepWhenAmDead Alderwasley Hall possibly High Grange both in Derbyshire and Brantwood Specialist School in Sheffield teach to ability as well.

We also have it happening in adult learning disabilities - people who lost their routine of going out to the day service centres with lockdowns and then just couldn't cope with going back into that routine as things reopened.