To think the Ofsted inspector who blames WFH parents for low attendance is probably just resentful?

[JandamiHash]

The Chief Inspector of Ofsted is blaming parents who WFH for the demise of school attendance https://www.itv.com/news/2025-02-16/parents-working-from-home-makes-children-feel-school-is-optional-ofsted-head?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0ULgukQnTsabNTlcJRBI4kVQsMYkhCPK_KA4lUAgVkxOocYfo3onmRNHU_aem_nuBknA_QEGgfA93CaTPagg. Apparently none of us want to take our slippers off so we let our kids stay at home while we work.

He makes some REALLY weird points like his overworked dad he didn’t see much as his inspiration to go to school. And also MPs making sure they spend weekends with their families is a bad work ethic.

I know MN is a good example of whenever WFH threads are brought up, non-WFHers come on dripping with resentment over WFH and implying WFHers don’t really work. AIBU to think this man - who has somehow been knighted - is basically doing that? I’m not sure how much inspecting he does now, but Ofsted inspectors aren’t any superior or harder working just because they spend a few days working away from home at a time (something BTW I’m expected to do, at least 1 overnight a month).

Also as someone from a household where 2 of us WFH, I can’t think of anything worse than having kids flapping around us while we try and work. I’m FT, and this week I’m off Weds-Fri, as is DH. my DD11 will be at home tomorrow with strict instructions to keep away unless there’s a serious emergency (she’s secondary and old enough to take care of herself) and at a friend’s on Tuesday. My DS is 8 and is going into a holiday club tomorrow and Tuesday as his neediness is unbearable. Both have somewhere between 97 and 99% attendance so far this academic year.

YABU - “He’s got a point”
YANBU - “He’s wrong/resentful”

It's immaterial whether anyone thinks it's a poor excuse. Don't conflate should and is.

If I'm wrong about the change in social contract, I'm wrong because I've misidentified that, not because someone isn't happy about the implications.

I don't know what long term impact this might have. There's clearly no automatic statute of limitations on shifts in social attitudes, though. Neither is a view that national finances require higher school attendance going to do anything to change parental attitudes in itself.

In years past it was the norm for one parent to work and one to stay home what was attendance like back then?

100% this. Normalise being ill and staying home because a parent has used their own judgement. I’m sick of being harassed by the school to fill in forms and then take further phone calls even though I’ve done the forms in first instance in a timely fashion. I only keep my child off if they’re sick!

This is my problem with the war on WFH. In years past, fewer women had big jobs. We need big jobs now to pay half mortgage. Plus everything costs more. My school has just asked us for two trips to bloody theme
parks. Zero educational value but £100+ required to foot the bill. We’re all killing ourselves to work more but yet it’s impossible without an element of WFH and flexibility. But schools and all these so-called ‘important people’ now want to take that off us too!

How is that relevant?

Oliver said several other factors were also affecting attendance, including poor mental health, such as anxiety and depression,and a lack of funding for services such as school nurses and child psychologists, as well as difficulties luring children away from their screens.

I love how this is just one paragraph, and no mention of physical health and waiting times for diagnosis/treatment (for all types of health), but going on and on about parents in their slippers being a bad example.

Yeah, it's all bollocks.

Agreed.

i have actually read the full article. In terms of the new report card - I agree with what he says. Frankly the unions seem to want no report cards at all except one saying ‘fabulous of course’.

on the WFH - the stats in the article for not ‘support’ him. They are meaningless. Correlation does not equal causation. He has not identified the cause - he’s just got an opinion.

The comment about Westminster clearing out on Thursday night is very ignorant.
Friday is the day that MPs generally do constituency stuff.
So on Thursday afternoon they'll be travelling back to their constituencies (some hundreds of mikes away).
On Fridays they'll be running advice surgeries, catching up with constituency staff, going to meetings about local issues etc.
It's not a day off to piss about.

He's having quite the week for crap ideas. This comes hot on the heels of extend term times, earlier this week. The teacher and TA recruitment crisis isn't quite bad enough, it would seem.

Basically, everyone else(teachers and parents )is lazy and not working hard enough, except him and his dad.

DS had a couple of years of bad luck with health from a chronic condition, slow recovery from an injury and a random surgical issue.
The one factor that could have helped with his attendance would be timely access to a GP to stop conditions escalating.

Last year I tried to contact the GP as his chronic condition was aggravating, but the 7 appointments they had for the day across their multiple practices were long gone and they sent a text out saying basically we have nothing, go to a pharmacy, the walk-in or A&E. Sitting in a crowded wating room for hours with contagiously ill people from across the city would not have been great for DS's health, so we carried on using his usual medication to the max dosage (which could have been a likely outcome anyway). A couple of weeks later he had a flare in school that couldn't be settled and it was a 999 call.

Strangely shirty letters from the school/ LA did nothing to improve DS's health.
DS ended up with "unauthorised" attendances for vomiting later in the school year because I didn't attempt to waste mine or the GP's time to make an appointment to prove that DS had a simple illness that required 48 hours rest out of school in line with the school's own bloody policy 🤦‍♀️

The real issues are:
Timely access to health care
Appropriate provision for additional needs
Engaging with a small core of families who do not engage with the education system

Where WFH is a factor, it's in facilitating families to keep children off when mildly ill rather than dosing with Calpol and hoping for the best and risking infecting more children in the class.

Oh wow! These are the bad apples. No less, chores done and whatever else on top.

There were sahp before but now you have those same people who fought to have a job want to still stay at home and get paid for doing little.

I don't dispute there are hard workers but a lot take liberties and spoil it for others.

There is a massive backlash against WFH at the moment. I am sure there are those that take the piss but it's down to companies to set the culture. In our place I can always get hold of WFH colleagues and we are in calls a lot everyone is fully and professionally dressed, workloads are kept on top of. I just don't recognise the newspaper headlines saying no one thinks people are really WFH on a Friday. If Anything I work later on Fridays if WFH because no commute.

And that's great. But it isn't being claimed that WFH is the only factor. It's merely being stated that it is a factor, and one worth exploring.

We know there are other issues. We know those other issues have a more profound impact.

It also is very reflective of general working. I work away a lot and Thursday evening is peak time for travel home because nobody wants to have their flight or train cancelled on a Friday and potentially be stuck into the weekend. It doesn't mean we don't work on Friday, we just do a different type of work.

Worth pointing out that we don't actually even know if it's a factor. There's no data, only vibes.

"We know there are other issues. We know those other issues have a more profound impact."

But he doesn't say that. All he says is the wfh bit.

If he'd stated it better, implied there were many reasons, and all needed looking into, he would've got a different reaction.

@JandamiHash

jesus no
i think he has a very solid point.

Is the emphasis on WfH actually his or the spin the reporting paper - The Times - has chosen for the story?

See I don’t think it is worth exploring any more than other baseless speculation about other causes.

I couldn’t think of anything worse that wfh with kids either, just to save a 10 minute school run 😅 doesn’t seem like a good trade off to me. It’s hard enough when they are poorly and home.