To not understand the fixation on attendance?

[Gardenschmarden99]

Or at least to the level it currently is…

New education secretary and based on her speech to the association of school leaders it seems her focus is on attendance.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m an ex teacher with two primary age children who go to school whenever they aren’t unwell. Broadly I’m in favour of children going to school!

But I don’t think I’ve met many teachers who really think the current fixation is helpful. For those with deep seated problems, they would benefit from intervention. For those families that were unlucky enough to catch covid and a sickness bug in one school year the rather officious computer says no letters just erode the seriousness of actual attendance problems.

When children are unwell, they shouldn’t be in school even if it makes the attendance dip below 97%.

SEN children without support don’t have an attendance problem, they have a support problem (and I know this is because central government don’t fund local government well enough to pay for it but the kids can’t help that!)

I also think it would be such a crowd pleaser to allow 5 days authorised holidays at the discretion of the headteacher…. And yes, I’d also be in favour of my child’s teacher being able to go to a family wedding or see their child on sports day or (God forbid) have a day out with their spouse a few times a year.

My family live in a European country (not especially known for being ‘progressive’) where all this over focus on attendance is just not a thing. They outperform us in league tables for academic and mental health of children.

AIBU?

I'm sure she will have looked at it all before making any decision, she will have looked at it from the aspect of the underprivileged (a category she grew up in) through to the ones who are in an optimal environment to thrive. You could always send her your suggestions?

I agree that "normal families" are being targeted. I think that is where they have totally lost all parental/public support. Even though my children have above 97% attendance, I consider that pure luck.

As a teen I had really terrible attendance and got in trouble (but nowhere near what I would now). I had health conditions which were undiagnosed and commonly are remain undiagnosed in women for years (PCOS and endometriosis). Given the state of the NHS, I think schools are on a bit of a hiding to nothing trying to work out who is "genuine" and who isn't. I had no medical evidence of my issues (despite passing out regularly from the pain) because I wasn't taken seriously. Similarly it took 3 hospital admission before my child was given a simple inhaler and only because I made a big fuss.

My autistic child had a period of finding school very difficult. Although I kept managing to get him in and was fortunate the mainstream school did their level best, I can well imagine others with less supportive schools wouldn't be so lucky. Thankfully I was able to get him a SEN school place before we got to full on school refusal. We are incredibly fortunate rather than "better parents" than those who haven't been given a SEN place.

These are just a few examples. There are lots of reasons children might need time off and blanket approaches are not just unhelpful they are completely counter productive because parents generally ignore the letters entirely due to them being over-issued.

If Labour really want attendance to improve they should worry more about

• Sorting out the NHS so children can get medical treatment
• Bring back proper sure start so families who do need help can get it early
• vastly improve SEN provision
• reduce pressure and stress on schools (which will filter down to the children)
• introduce different attendance codes for children with long term health conditions or disabilities who have time off related to this, so that children with cancer aren't getting attendance letters (yes, this really happens!)

@lemonmeringueno3

Calling me up to get my child into school the morning after a known GA is not an acceptable blanket policy.

I'm sure you will have some reason why this was a measured response
But the bottom line is we are real people not data
And at the end of that data is a child who has unmet needs that are being ignored while it's easier to send out letters to a family

Yes, and it won't do to say these are bad schools, poor practice etc. Yes, we know. That's immaterial. It happens, it happens as a consequence of the system we have and it's a problem.

If she is on the spectrum you should agree a plan with the school - she shouldn’t be marked absent - agree registration with school office. My teen had an autistic meltdown and off school on advice of CAMHS. We agreed a reduced timetable- arrives late/ leaves early, misses non essential classes/self study etc.

I wouldn’t accept a late start being marked down as absent- could have implications for you legally if LA wanted to be arsey- but key thing is you need an agreed plan with school to support your child’s educational and emotional needs.

No I don't have some reason.

School staff are human too. They may have been working through a list of names without context. They may have written or recorded the date of the operation incorrectly. They may have some parents who lie about their children having operations and medical appointments. They may be cruel and malicious and called with the intention of upsetting a lovely, genuine parent. I'm afraid I don't know.

But please do remember that school staff are also parents. We also have children with SEND and medical needs. We also get these letters and phone calls. I think we don't ascribe unpleasant intent to them but we do get them.

You would assume that if it was a genuine error they would keep insisting the child comes in less than 24 hrs after a GA with the reasoning being they can sit quiet and be observed by school just as well as at home

I find it frustrating that the British education system tends to enforce strict, authoritarian rules that punish all parents, regardless of individual circumstances. Even parents dealing with genuine issues such as a child's illness, family emergencies, or the need for a holiday are reprimanded. I even know of a case where a parent received a lecture from the school after their child was hospitalized following a car accident. It seems that there is a lack of empathy and flexibility in such cases.

Furthermore, I am concerned about the outdated nature of certain subjects in the education system, particularly music. Instead of focusing on modern music production tools like Pro Tools or Ableton, students are still being taught traditional notation and old-fashioned instruments. This seems out of touch with the current trends and technologies in the music industry.

Overall, it appears that the education system is in need of a major overhaul. Unfortunately, many public bodies, including those in government, seem to lack the necessary imagination and innovation to bring about these much-needed changes.

My child went in to school the day after a GA. The hospital said lots of children are fine use your judgement. And i suspect theres a proportion of parents that just keep their child off the next day because they can, rather than because they definitely think their child is in no fit state. The school will have almost certainly had other children come in the day after a GA, so will naturally think yours might be ok to as well.

Medical advise was to be off a week until seen in clinic and then we were advised further.
We followed the medical advise from the specialist who did the surgery and knew the situation.

Because parents who are disengaged don’t shell out £25k for private school, private school kids don’t tend to get involved in county lines, and lastly, many private schools will boot out anyone who isn’t meeting expectations in some way (including SEN - my friend’s daughter was kicked out of her private primary when she received her autism diagnosis).

I wouldn’t be confident that schools could act as effectively as me in this situation. Being in loco parentis for thirty students doesn’t always work as effectively as a parent looking after their child. If your child has had a GA, it might be due diligence to look after them yourself.

The whole attendance thing has gone too far.

You get treated like dirt if your child's attendance is low no matter the reason. My GP has told me to ignore them, the SEN department at the LA has told me to ignore them and the school nurse has too. But it's not so easy when you're in a meeting where 5 of them are ganging up on you because your child dared to be autistic and get Long COVID!

This is wrong. She should be marked as late. If she is marked as absent then she isn’t in school. How do they then secure her welfare if there is a fire or something when officially she isn’t there.

My DD is 10, always likes to be in school and she's only been off when properly sick (temperature, vomiting). The letters our school send seem a bit harsh - we had one at the end of the Autumn term saying her percentage (which I later realised was based on the whole year to come, not the days that had taken place so far) and how she needed to attend or we would be called in to discuss it. I think she'd missed three days with two illnesses that term. I was having a pretty shit mental health episode and felt like they would be involving social services and she would be taken away (I have autism, ADHD and RSD, I can catastrophise). It all seemed a bit heavy, the tone of the letter was quite threatening. It just made me send her in when she was ill out of fear of things getting worse, and they just called me to get her anyway.

We used to call attendance awards "lucky health prizes"

Tories and Labour Two cheeks of the same arse

Correlation does not equal causation

Not always no, however in the case of attendance it really does make sense. When children miss a lot of school they have gaps, these are difficult to catch up on for many children and always show when it comes to assessment etc. For example, if you miss 2 weeks of school that's probably two different units of maths. Unfortunately, schools often simply don't have the resources to properly dedicate to help children catch up after a trip to Disney or the likes.

But this assumes that low attendance is due to the majority of parents taking their children out for a two week holiday to Disneyland or similar, most low attendance is due to unmet Sen. More and more complex children are being pushed into mainstream with no support and as you say the school don’t have the funding to support. It is supposed to take 20 weeks for ehcp assessment which is long enough but a lot of councils are running at double this plus more, add in tribunal which is currently taking 10 months and it can be years before a child gets the support in place they need to be able to attend school. If a child with unmet Sen needs goes to school with no support they will improve the absense statistics but they really won’t be improving their grades. In fact we see thread after thread on here where people are moaning about an Sen child in their kids class who is disrupting the learning of the whole class and the posters moan that the parents should remove the child from school as it’s not fair, plus comments about the child needing to go to a special school. The last government were very much divide and conquer by putting the blame on parents for anything to distract from their own short comings

Exactly, we're not all swanning off to Disney!

My DD is one with unmet needs due to her SEN. The attendance person at the LA can lecture me all she likes but it won't make a blind bit of difference. I've been advised by my GP, the school nurse and the SEN department at the LA to just ignore them. But that's easier said than done!

This is definitely a problem and certainly does affect life chances. And if you do have SEN or EBSA, no one seems to give a flying foxtrot about the attendance.

I know from my experience that children feel crap about not attending school. They miss their friends and social life and feel rubbish about themselves. What is it about schools nowadays which results in a situation where a huge percentage are missing so much? Is there a mismatch between what’s provided and what’s required?

Unmet SEN is a separate issue, I agree. However, most unauthorised absence in the schools I've come across has been for holidays.

I would expect a fixation on attendance by the Department for Education, because it serves as a measurable barometer, and aids obtaining the necessary deeper understanding of the multiple causes of it, enabling new policies to be developed.

The new Education Secretary is likely wanting to understand:

• How many children are likely missing school due to neglectful and/ or disengaged parents and what can be done to improve it.
• How many children are missing school due to mental health problems, undiagnosed SEN etc and what can be done to improve it, including ensuring their needs can be better met.
• How many children are not in school due to family holidays, the cost of family holidays, the timing etc and what can be done about it.

Ultimately, children who are not at school are not learning. Their absence has an impact - on them, on their families, on the teaching staff. Non attendance has gone through the roof for a myriad of reasons, and it's the sitting government's job to understand the reasons and put in place a variety of measures to address it.

I say all of this as a parent of a SEN child who has experienced two significant bouts of school avoidance. The impact on our family was huge. If scrutiny of children's absence leads to a greater depth of understanding and supportive measures, then I'm all for it. The Tories used it as a stick to beat both parents and teachers. I'm hopeful that this government will take a different approach.

It's not just undiagnosed SEN. It's diagnosed SEN but needs not being met. Complete lack of understanding of SEN by the attendance bod at the LA.

I don't know how significant it is but for my DD the other issue is Long COVID. And absolutely no support for it. And the LA attendance person having no understanding of that either!

I mean honestly if the Education secretary wants to understand anything they need to start by having some people who have a clue in the attendance department!