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 was at work today. I work in a tourist attraction.

A teacher was really shouting at a poor teenager Who I expect had adhd. I felt so bad for him. The teacher was humiliating him in ground of the whole class and then the general public. I nearly stepped in. I later saw the poor boy further in the attraction so I'm glad
He got in.

The teacher was a bully and clearly couldn't handle a child with adhd without resorting to Controlling bullying techniques.

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

Complete opposite here. We have on average about 4 kids out of 30 that go on holidays during term time. The vast majority of them are rarely off otherwise so their attendance by the end of summer term is not actually that bad.

The ones that do have actual poor attendance tend to be kids with SEND, SEMH issues , issues at home or a mix of all of the above.

What I hate is that it discriminates against kids who are having health problems. My son had flu and repeated ear and chest infections during one school term, and the panic about missing 4 weeks of school in total was worse than the illnesses.

The amount of stress these attendance people cause is likely to make attendance worse not better by affecting the parents' mental health.

And kids' mental health too- my son was very worried about missing so much school, he loves school and has good grades. I think it's totally unacceptable to send attendance letters if the child is at home practically unable to walk from bad flu.. it's basically bullying children when they're sick.

Yes, very true. My DD has Long COVID and gets ill with everything. She gets very depressed having to stay in bed and not see her friends. And it is bullying. That's exactly how I would describe the LA attendance person - just tried to bully and belittle me.

Can you complain to the school? Poor lad.

@Justrolledmyeyesoutloud

I did think about it but there had no uniforms and we have 20/30 schools a day so I couldn't easily work out who there were.

I feel bad now. I wish I had asked.

I have been through child’s attendance records with a fine tooth comb now and realised that every time she has an appointment like medical etc, she is marked off. So all the CAMHs, dental appointments (which I can’t very well insist on having outside school hours) are taken out of the school attendance.

Is dem the rules then?

Somebody needs to use the Equality Act and take them to court as playing nice obviously doesnt work

They should be marked as authorised absense

I think the trouble is a lot of these cases are people with SEN DC and all our energy goes into trying to get them the support they are entitled to. I don't have the time, money or energy to take the school to court over attendance. I think the school is just trying to get rid of my daughter, but I'm not going to let them do that.

I agree that schools put pressure on Sen parents hoping that they will eventually withdraw their child and home educate or find another school.

For those parents who really don't value education at all, I think that insisting their children have 97%+ attendance makes bugger all difference to the child's academic outcome.