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 just see it from my own perspective. I really hated any kind of group work and lessons where the class was sat in clusters, such as science labs where we had 8 sat around large tables - wonderful for bullying and disruption! My exam results speak volumes - my "best" results were English and we'd had our last three years' of English lessons with an "old school" teacher who had his own classroom (a "cow shed" portacabin) with single desks in rows, all facing forward. It was literally the only lesson I looked forward to because there was never any group work, and very little disruption/noise. When I say "best" results, I still didn't pass, but the grades weren't as ridiculously poor as my other subjects, all of which were in modern classrooms in clusters which I absolutely detested. Even my historically "best" subject being Maths, I failed miserably with a U, and then went on to get an A at A level with self study after leaving my hell hole comp, and then got over 90% in my chartered accountancy "maths" exam called "quantitative analysis" which was heavy on statistics and probability - all by lone/self study in my own environment. English was the only subject I didn't want to truant from - in a way it was my "safe space" because the teacher and classroom didn't lend itself to bullying and disruption.

And this is what is so wrong with the one size fits all method of teaching sadly 😢.

Gove started the rot. If you came into a year 1 class now it would be unrecognisable from one 15 years ago. The Singapore style of rote teaching is everywhere. Children have to sit on the carpet for hours. In KS1 and 2 they learn grammar concepts which are irrelevant and outdated (Gove again). Children in year 1 are doing daily dictation.

Read that again…

5 year olds are doing daily sentence dictation. They are sent away to rewrite it if it’s wrong. This is a state school in 2024.

Everything is about data. Rote learning gets results. It breaks children and squeezes every bit of creativity out of them, but the results on how well they decode “Alien Words”is great.

Gove destroyed GCSEs. My degree didn’t rely on one exam, nor did my MEd. Why did we push the kids back to O-level days? One slip and you’re done.

Money to support the children struggling/ to make the curriculum more accessible (for NT and ND children) has gone. I’m doing a pastoral care role. I support the exact children we are talking about. My job pays 22k a year before tax. I am a trained educator, with many years experience and I’m good at what I do. But look at the pay! There’s no money to pay more. The pastoral care was better funded in the early 00s.

There’s a few reasons and not one has even started to considerthe COVID issues.

All of this has changed in the last 15 years. Not just tech.

Hear hear. Having two daughters four years apart, the eldest who started school in 2010 there was a real difference once the Gove changes kicked in, and not for the better.

Sprigato....my sons school changed to an academy and it really went down hill. Before if there was a problem we could talk to them. Now it takes weeks of emails and phone calls before you can speak to anyone. I've withdrawn my son from school completely as he was having a nervous breakdown with the pressure. I asked school if he could go part time or drop some GCSE subjects..... they said he had to attend full time and do all the GCSE subjects. No help or support for him. He was getting in trouble for the slightest little thing.....and soo unhappy.

I work in SEND, I love my job and my families.

School expectations are overwhelming children. As is social media and tech. Before, you would have a bad day at school, go home and escape. Now it follows you everywhere. If you are struggling socially, social media is there and in your face. If you are overwhelmed with work, all the school apps are there and in your face.

Behaviour is a huge issue in schools. Lots of Children can't cope with the unruly behaviour. So schools try and tackle it. Lots of other children can't cope with the zero tolerance approaches. Schools seem truly damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Children aren't able to access support before little problems become huge problems. The health system in particular is just not there for them.

Parents are seeking out support anywhere they can. I do think there's now an extra issue that if you post on social media that your child is anxious or struggling about school, you get lots of replies which all bet tell you you are an awful parent for sending them in anyway. I've seen parents called abusive for doing so. The responses often aren't to try and tackle problems before that action is taken.

A small minority (I'd say maybe 2%) of the families I see I look at it and think they just can't be bothered. I think these are the demographic of families who always have had poor attitudes towards education, it's just a new way to justify it. This is just a tiny minority though.

It is a hugely complex issue, impacted by poor services, huge demand, limited resources and a huge behaviour problem.

I often go into my old schools as a professional now. I walk through the halls and remember so many lovely memories. The senco at one now is someone who I went to school with throughout our entire schooling, she says they get none of the stuff we used to get. It's just fighting for survival.

@bottomlypots absolutely - he sucked all the joy out of teaching and learning!

Well you keep hearing how bad behaviour is in schools - other kids are having to cope with that bad behaviour.

I went to a school with appalling behaviour and I became a "school refuser" because of the violent little fucks I was forced to be around. It's quite scary when people throw chairs around a room and beat you or someone else up. I got spat on once.

The scariest incident was when a boy cornered me in our empty form room and started talking dirty to me and groping me while two other boys blocked the door. I don't know how far it would have gone if a teacher hadn't heard me shouting.

The deputy head told me off for being in the form room in the first place (I'd been there alone, reading a book during lunch as I had no friends - the patrolling teachers would usually turn a blind eye), refused to call my parents to come and get me, and sent me to my next lesson with the same boy who had groped me.

My parents weren't slack, they just couldn't make me go to school any more. Going to court and being told to go to school by a judge didn't make me go either.

They eventually managed to get me to an out of catchment school, but while the kids there were nice enough I was woefully behind by that point and stressed out by any sort of loud or rowdy behaviour - stressed out by other teenagers, basically. My attendance was still poor, and I left as soon as I legally could (15 back then).

There's a 50 per cent rise in teacher absence too.

This. Plus greater awareness re the damage school is doing to self esteem. Greater awareness of alternatives. Greater awareness of how shit school is on so many levels. How useless the learning is, how awful the behaviour is, how socially cruel it is. We'd never expect an adult in a workplace to put up with these issues. We'd just say leave. Do something else. Its a perfect storm for attendance issues.

If there was more suitable provision early on then kids wouldn't have to get to this level of crisis. The funding was cut to the bone and specialist schools and units have closed down, with kids forced into mainstream. Funding there is also cut and lessons were designed by Gove to be as dull as possible.

If we had got more help when my year 4 child first showed signs of distress, it never would have got to this point. Now he is self harming, asking us to kill him, has lost friends because he can't cope and verbally lashes out (not physically) or avoids them. He is fully aware that he is different and can't do as well as his classmates as he has autism, adhd, motor skills disorder and hypermobility. Even now, we are still being told by the school that the ehcp is almost certain to be refused. This is all taking time and resources away from the regular kids in the class, so they will be losing out too. It's a bloody joke!

But hey, it's all wishy washy parenting to blame isn't it.

I was teaching from 1996. I think a really important thing is the intensity of the school day. It’s horrible now there’s absolutely no down time. Every one needs this. I think it was one of the things that drove me out of teaching.

1996, kids moseyed in, did the register, they settled down after 6 or 7 minutes. End of lesson they packed up, took about 5 minutes. Hour and 10 minute lunch, 25 min morning break

2020 kids has to be in within 4 minutes of beginning. Even if coming from another part of the school.Tatgets on the board to add to stress, and an activity to do during register. Different activities, questioning everyone, long conclusion right up to last minute. Pack away as soon as bell rings and rush to other side of school.Frantic activity all lesson to stop them getting bored. 35 mins lunch, 15 mins break. No chatting in registration. More ‘activities’ to do. No adult could cope with that.

I hated it, it used to over stimulate me as an experienced teacher. Displays everywhere for learning, but just add to over stimulation. Rush rush rush rush. l just wanted a room with pale blue walls and restful pictures on it. Instead every inch of wall was cluttered with horrible garish colours and type faces . All over. I feel stressed again just thinking about it.

Ita awful now. My nd dd would have been fine in the 90’s. It blew her mind in 2022.

Another issue is that maybe a quarter of schoolchildren are now living in significant poverty/substandard housing with all the stress and emotional difficulties that brings. Children who are hungry dirty or behind on homework due to home circumstances can either get bullied, (or become bullies themselves to avoid being victims ) or spiral down the behaviour system and understandably disengage from school.

This is such an interesting discussion.

Hard not to relate it all to one's own experience. I struggled to go to school and was in CAMHS as a child. I spent time in the principal's office and matron's room, as well as hiding in the corridor. There was no pastoral room. But I loved rote learning, rules, single desks and to an extent even exams (as opposed to long projects or team projects). So luckily despite serious difficulties, in the end I did well once the set up suited me a bit later on in school (not without continued psychiatric problems but still I was in school and achieving). But applying those things that suited me to everyone clearly wouldn't work and would be absolutely awful for some.

But tailoring the experience seems really important. In my school I was able to stay away from the loud dining hall. I avoided sport with support from my mum, and some other activities that didn't suit me. This was also all tolerated by the school because I was "clever" and academically engaged. And I think I knew that.

If my differences weren't tolerated and accepted, if I couldn't avoid the activities that were too distressing...it could have been very different.

What I am getting is that under resourced schools cannot provide much tailoring of the experience. That means only a narrow band of people will thrive.

I'm also wondering if although we pay a lot of lip service to celebrating difference, in some ways we are actually not doing well at this attitude wise? Some of the attitudes people are describing of staff seem more towards a Victorian sort of approach that what you'd expect in 2024. Almost seems to have gone backwards.

Differentiating between 'I don't want to, because I don't want to, and now I've got a label to hang it off' from the genuine cases is a problem for society as a whole.

Not in my child's case. He uses no social media. Refuses to have a smart phone at all. Not on FB, Insta, Twitter, or anything. Not even on our family Whatsapp.

As a teacher, we have seen it at my school as parents and children not viewing school as so important anymore in terms of missing a day or more since covid lockdowns when they were away- a rather apathetic attitude unfortunately has crept in.

Rise in parent mental health issues,
more parents working from home and laziness about leaving the house, rise in behavioural problems at school so a lot of children unhappy and don't want to come to school, more permissive attitudes in parenting, more permissive attitudes in schools which makes the classroom quite chaotic.

Schools are the opposite of permissive. They are like Victorian prisons.

Schools are often horrible places to be now.

Teachers are stressed, overworked, don't want to be there.
Why would children?

Don't we think a high-stress environment with bonkers behavioural policies, boring and over stuffed curriculums and being overseen by adults who hate their jobs is going to put children off going?

The main reasons are:
Gove Curriculum
Academisation
Cuts in SEN funding
Cuts in education funding
Cuts in mental health services
Covid
Zero tolerance behaviour policies with a focus on shame, punishment and isolation
Poverty and inequality in society

Too boring and unkind.
Adults with absolutely no compassion or kindness for our children often born in of sheer ignorance.

Because they don't get taught about what being dyslexic means, what having autism means etc.

@MrsKintner there are plenty of free courses that take very little time to gen up about sen

If I was a teacher I would do a few and learn more about my pupils needs.

100% this and I’m not sure how it’s going to change.

You having to wrack your brains to figure out what has changed in the last 15 years says so much about how you know nothing about the current education system. Ask any teacher what major changes occurred in 2014 under Gove and there’s your answer.

Smart phones it is not….