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?

Back when I was a child I'd never dare refuse school because my mum would have beaten me and mentally tortured me. That's frowned on these days. That didn't help me when ds school refused. 1, it's illegal 2. I Don want to be my mum 3, if you think the "my parents hit me and I turned out fine!" Is a lie. I'm far from fine and I can never be fine after that childhood.

However luckily my son got top grades, top A levels and accepted into various Russel group unis. But do you know what? School fucked up his mental health so badly he is medically unfit to work now at 20.

An Educational Psychologist asked what I wanted for my dd with ASD. My reply? To survive school with her mental health intact.

I could have held a gun to my sons head and frog marched him in. He'd be long dead by his own hands. Good grades mean nothing if your mental health is shot to pieces

@48wheaties you can challenge the threat of fines. DS’s absences should be authorised. Email the school and LA requesting the absences are marked as I. Remind them the DfE’s attendance guidance states illness (physical and mental health related) must be authorised. Add in that the regulations (Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006) make clear where a pupil is absent because they are unable to attend because of their medical needs the absence must be regarded as authorised.

Go on to say that as an early review has not been held and DS is not receiving an alternative education under s.19 of the Education Act 1996 or anything detailed, specified and quantified in F under s.42 CAFA 2014 the school and LA could have done and still can do more to support DS with his needs arising from his disability.

If you have already done that, contact SOSSEN.

Thank you @SearchingForSolitude. I feel bullied and I'm at my wits end with it all. I appreciate your comments. Review is coming up soon. It's not looking hopeful that he'll sit any GCSEs in summer. As long as he's happy doing his hobby, then I'm happy. After that, he's not compulsory school age so there is that. But yes, it looks like we'll go down the EOTAS route soon.

@48wheaties feeling bullied is exactly why the LA behave as they do. LAs rely on parents feeling like that when they are already drained and exhausted. Right now, DS’s MH has to be the priority, GCSEs can always come later.

You ask why are some children refusing to go to school today… have you even read the responses on here and all the other threads like this one? Do you not think the parents on here ARE concerned about their children’s futures?!

Your ignorance is astounding.
You clearly have no clue what school is actually like today. When did you go to school?

I wonder what you’d make of the fact that I’m an ex teacher and my children don’t go to school at all and haven’t done for years. Bet you wouldn’t believe it if I told you they are very sociable, resilient, bright and love learning yet do no formal learning and have never been frog-marched anywhere.

I think many schools are horrible environments for kids now. If teachers are giving up is it any surprise that children are too?

Bullying is widespread and not managed.
Discipline is shaming and indiscriminate and delivered without compassion or support.
The out of date curriculum is taught in a piecemeal, exam focused way taking any pleasure out of learning and constantly requiring self examination and improvement - it's never enough that you've done your best. This can be really hard for anxious children.

The pandemic showed that the sky didn't fall down when you didn't go to school, I think some children had a taste of what freedom from that anxiety was and it made it harder to go back.

I had a school refuser, he would have destroyed the house, jumped out in traffic or (when bigger) become violent if physically forced into school. He was eventually encouraged back by a patient and understanding attendance officer (over many games of Uno) until Covid put paid to all his progress.

This thread is so heavily skewed by people with SEN children when I don't even think that's the key issue with school attendance figures. It's certainly not one of the biggest areas of concerns for school attendance officers.

It would be nice if we could talk about or debate the other reasons (or at least people accept that there are other reasons) than children with SEN.

It is the biggest area. I left secondary teaching in 2021, the majority of long term absence was SEND.

EBSA is classed as an SEN. SEN includes SEMH needs.

The link in the OP also focuses on SEN.

Actually you are wrong. A heavy majority of EBSA is of neurodivergent children.

There are also "truant" children , many of whom have SEND needs that school is not meeting one way or another, so they vote with their feet, but perhaps aren't as distressed and overwhelmed by life as the EBSA population.

Of course it depends on what persistently absent means. If 20 percent are now persistently absent, as per recent press releases, that might mean all those with less than 95 percent attendance - which would include my child with a chronic illness who loves school, attends whenever possible, but has frequent hospital appointments (3 in the next month, for example). That just can't be helped and is not really symptomatic of anything but bad luck on the genetic inheritance front.

Has there been a change in people's attitudes to things like taking holidays in term time? Almost certainly, for some people. That could drop people below 95 percent too, a week's holiday and a childhood illness in the same year. Again, not really a giant problem.

It's a very different problem though from the burgeoning mental health crisis of EBSA.

@DrRuthGalloway excellent post.

Persistent absence is described as missing 10% or more of available sessions.

Honestly if I'd have had the option to not go to school when I was a teenager, I'd have taken it.

Was I allowed?

No.

Not always? I'd say hardly, hardly, ever. What's lazy about taking on 100% responsibility for your child's education, like home schoolers do? Like ferrying your kids around between many disparate home ed activities all week? About having to entertain them 24/7 with no help?

We had 2 years of home Ed/ EBSR and it was exhausting. Back in system now and it feels like the 'lazy' option. At least 50% of the motivation to get in everyday despite massive stressful push back from my kids is I need a break!

As I've said on a previous thread about this, so many teachers apparently do not want to be working in a school anymore - why are we so surprised that so many kids also don't want to be in a very oppressive, barely functioning education system?

Yes, there is very likely to be contagion.

But if children's needs were being met (including SEND but also NT kids who find school stressful and de-motivating) then I think fewer kids would be persistently absent.

At my DS's school recently, there were so many teachers absent in one week, that they ended up having a large number of kids, across year groups, watching films in the hall. Yes, maybe many of those teachers were sick, but the impact on the kids and perhaps what they perceive from that can't be minimised.

I think it's incredibly easy (and dare I say lazy) to just blame the child or the parents. Because that way you don't have to look at the much larger problem of why schools have become such difficult and stifling environments for both kids and teachers.

I have massive sympathy for this but I’m racking my brains trying to think what the difference is between schools only 15 years ago or so, and schools now, that means this is a sudden and widespread problem.

I can only conclude it’s smartphones because I can’t think of anything else that is that different from the school environment in the early 2000s when I was there.

Personally I think it’s time for responsible parents to bring their children up tablet and phone free.

EDIT: sorry the last paragraph was NOT aimed at the poster I quoted, and I acknowledge this would mean time travelling for a lot of parents whose kids currently have EBSA

I think academy trusts have a good deal to answer for here. Many of them have a corporate business leadership model not based in good pedagogical practice; various aspects of school culture are increasingly hostile to students who need a more nuanced approach (ND, SEND, mental health challenges etc) and off-the-shelf behaviour policies (such as Ready To Learn) lead to these students spending a lot of time anxious, frustrated and in isolation. Bought-in policies on homework and other aspects of curriculum delivery (look-cover-write-check, tech alternatives to direct teaching) can be dehumanising and uninspiring. Toilet policies add to anxiety and poor wellbeing, especially for girls. Constant surveillance and punishment for things like violating the one-way system to avoid punishment for being late, insufficient time at lunch to enable all students to eat, loos only available at break and not enough time for all students to use them...most adults would struggle to function at that pitch all day every day. All of these things undermine (or prevent) healthy relationships between students and staff and make school untenable for a growing number of students. I hear a lot on MN about kids lacking resilience and their lives not being tough enough, and I wonder whether those posters have any idea what is actually going on in state secondary schools.

Wasn't great before, the difference is that it is not just the "poor" people not sending them to school now. DD's school (pre pandemic) had many students below 80%

Have you read literally ANY of this thread? Please do explain how you deal with a 12 yo who desperately wants to go to school and is sobbing in the car because she CAN'T. Idiotic comment.

Not intended as a goady question but has the huge focus on introspection and feelings resulted in teens ‘hyping up’ their emotions and focussing on them to the exclusion of regulating themselves and being able to stay calm?

That assumes that behaviour, disruption, etc in schools hasn't changed.

In reality, it's changed massively for the worse.

When schools were relatively calm, controlled, with generally well behaved children, the shy, anxious, stressed, ND, children could mostly function. Even moreso when a lot of the education was done on single desks, individual "quiet" work, etc.

Now many schools are more like a warzone with out of control kids, loud, shouty, disruptive, etc., the anxious/ND/shy/stressed kids find it harder to cope. Added into that, most classrooms now have clusters of desks or pupils sat around a big table, plus ever more groupwork, meaning less opportunities for pupils who prefer to study quietly on their own.

The ND and other "special" needs kids have always been there, it's just that previously schools were better managed, kids were better controlled, etc., so they could cope. It's not the struggling kids who have changed, it's the entire environment in which they are forced to work within that's changed.

So it’s a parenting issue? Poorly brought up children being so disruptive that others don’t want to go in?

I think that aspect of it is really interesting. I've been a teacher for 25 years and was trained in the 90s to be all about group work, different kinds of learning styles etc. I think there's some truth that for some ND kids, the older fashioned, more regimented and individual desks etc would suit them better..more predictable, "safer". This is an incredibly complex issue and there simply isn't a straightforward answer to any of that.

Absence rates had been falling since a previous high in 2008 / 2010 then something happened in 2020 that caused them to sharply increase again.

It was group work that finished my dd off. And the pouncing on them to answer questions.

There’s certainly an element of this. The behaviour my DC describe is close to feral but my kids just roll with it as they’re don’t have to contend with any kind of anxiety/ND. I can’t imagine how terrifying some of this behaviour is to more vulnerable kids - not to mention some of that behaviour is targeted at them. A few months ago one kid was made to get on his knees and beg for mercy while a gang filmed it and uploaded it to social media for shits and giggles 🤬. I’d be fucking terrified to go to school if I thought that was going to happen to me 😢.