To think that mass non-attendance at school is COVID-related?

[ThatDearLilacBird]

It seems like the impact of Covid is still lingering in terms of attendance. Whether it’s fear of getting sick, lingering health concerns or a change in routine during the pandemic, it feels like there’s a pattern of kids (and even parents) being less motivated to go back to school in full force. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me overthinking it?

I must admit Covid was a real eye opener as to how little actually got done at school. My primary aged child did her days maths in under 2 minutes one day. The entire day of learning in 20 mins. Makes you wonder quite how bad the disruption is.

I really hope your child recovered well. Here you just have to go private. I’ve had friends take out bank loans for MH treatment for their kids. It was well worth it but my goodness we shouldn’t need to do it.

The pupils starting school this September will not be able to remember COVID so it is up to their parents to not remind them, or behave as if school doesn't matter. Why reflog this horse?

Hopefully the COVID effects will be slowly dissipating.

Society has changed since covid, school kids aren't immune to that.

With increased working from home and hybrid working, plus an increase in flexible working patterns, the idea of being out of the house from x to y time Monday to Friday, has disappeared for many of us.

There was a realisation for some kids, that they learn better out of school, or less stressed at least. Coupled with that, some parents will be feeling more confident in homeschooling after covid.

It means that more of the kids that were just about coping but not thriving, are now at home instead. That's not necessarily A bad thing.

Covid busted the 'myth' that the best way to learn was to be in school. It also shattered the idea that everyday of attendance counts, when kids were off for months at a time, or because they happened to cough several times.

You see it on here a lot, many new parents are more anxious, social conventions around things like kissing babies has tightened up. As a society, I think we're a lot more anxious now, which means people err on the side of caution with attendance more.

But everything's changed. McDonald's is no longer fast food. When you go on holiday in the UK, swimming slots have to be reserved (never came across that before). Things that were drop in, are appointment only. There's less spontaneity.

I think it's okay there. Life evolves, society evolves, and who may be the old school contract is either evolving or needs to as well. Too much of school requires squashing children into boxes, and if they don't fit, tough luck. Many, if not most would benefit from a more flexible approach. Schools need to move with the times, and for some that might mean a more hybrid approach, with elements of home learning, flexibility etc, to mirror what's happening with the rest of society.

Schools went online during Covid, it was a very different thing to homeschooling.
Or just simply not turning up half the time.

schools were smaller, less pressured, teachers were more respected and behaviour was generally better - the environment was totally different. Actually quite a lot of kids, by mid-secondary age voted with their feet and would start "blue collar" jobs at 14/15/16.

Yes, but some schools provided very little work. So many parents supplemented and did homeschooling themselves. A lot of people were surprised that either how little was provided or how quickly their kids could get through it without the distractions for classroom.

There's certainly a subset of parents that took the opportunity of covid to see whether they could do a better job themselves, and found that they could!

Their older siblings will be able to, and when you consider blended families and some of the age gaps involved, even more likely.

The behaviours in Downing Street enabled and supported by the then Prime Minister and his attitude to honesty and rules I think have contributed to a feeling that too many things are optional, schooling is not the only one.

I agree with the suggestion that wfh or even hybrid working may have had an impact.

I think there’s a mix of reasons - some became homeschooled because lockdown showed those children fared better out of school, some will have struggled after lockdown, some will be struggling whilst waiting for help (whilst thresholds to access help increase, along with waiting lists). It would be irrational to assume that attendance (especially when most absence is due to illness) would decrease when covid is added into the mix - it’s always circulating at varying levels and kids aren’t magically spared the impacts. Studies show that people are more prone to other infections after covid too. Obviously the tens of thousands of kids with long covid now will also affect attendance. More will get it from the wave we are currently in. Teacher absence due to sickness has also unsurprisingly increased since covid hit.

Unfortunately Covid is still very much here. I know several people who are ill with it at the moment. Viruses do not disappear when you stop thinking about them they aren't like tinkerbell in Peter pan! I do think some of the absences are covid related, kids are still getting covid and covid has also caused a rise in other illnesses too as after having covid people are more vulnerable to secondary infections caused by immune suppression. There are also many children with long covid.

It's this for us. For me COVID lockdowns helped me to sort my work life balance and realised that my dd missing a few days of school isn't the end of the world. So we now take a few 1 day trips each year for either a weekend away or a day trip and she misses school that day. I'm really honest with the school, we never lie or call her in sick. School is very important and she is fully engaged and supported at home to ensure she is learning, but we don't aim for 100% attendance anymore as it just isn't important

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Lack of funding in schools and lack of SEN support. In my LA it is almost impossible to get an EHCP so that the school recieves extra funding to educated that child. In my LA it is not uncommon for it to reach the stage where a child has a complete breakdown and is out of school for years before the LA will do anything. It took me 84 weeks and two tribunals (both conceded by the LA) to get my son an EHCP even though educational professionals employed were saying he need one when he was three!
Overstuffed and dull curriculum means that the school day is intense from Y1 and children don’t want to go to school.

Massive secondary school which are overwhelming for neurodivergent children. I went to an ‘average’ sized secondary school of 600/700 pupils. 1,000 pupils was considered a large school. My old school now has 1,200+ pupils all crammed into the same hall, canteen and corridors. One local school has a 2,000 pupils. I think there is one school under 1000 pupils where I live.

Draconian academies with zero tolerance uniform policies. School shoes break two day before the end of term and mum doesnt have the money to replace until she gets paid then straight to isolation for you until shoes are bought. It doesn’t matter if this happens on a Thursday you get home from work at 6pm and all the shops are shut you must have shoes by Friday at 9am or it’s isolation for you. As a child from a low income family I would have rather have missed school than be publicly shamed and sent to isolation for the day for being poor.

Yes, for some of us the school offered so little that there was in fact not much difference between covid and not turning up at all.

Should state that I dont blame the school for this either. They were between a rock and a hard place.

A child entering yR now should have little direct impact from the restrictions in 2020-2022, but if they have any health/ development issues their access to early intervention will have been more delayed than a child of that age in the 2010s.

A few children with exacerbated delays in a class can have a significant impact on their 27 classmates.

DS1 had a paperwork trail relating to autistic traits back to age 2½. He was referred for assessment in 2018 at 7½ and diagnosed late 2019 by the time he was 9.
DS2 has just started referral for assessment at 12. There have been niggling issues for a few years, but it's been so difficult to unravel whether it was a temporary Coz Covid, or a deeper underlying issue that didn't show up obviously before his 7th birthday in deepest lockdown. Most of the time he was 7, it was illegal to play with other children. It took two years for him to develop close friendships afterwards. School brushed off his dyslexic traits as Coz Covid because of losing 6 months of y2/3, but when he was privately assessed (no LA assessment) he was found to have a very spiky profile and significant issues.
Fortunately we can pay privately because an NHS wait in our LA would mean no diagnosis before y11 which is a tad late to be helpful.
DS2 has been significantly hindered by the two year age gap putting him post-Covid compared to DS1. This is despite educated parents who can afford to fill the gaps in the public sector.

Thousands of DS2s have been left to flounder and disengage by the gaps and delays in the public sector.

I think looking at why so many kids seem to need mental health support is important. It’s a bit extraordinary to me how children's mental health seems to have nosedived so badly.

Mentally healthy people aren’t plagued by COVID, most of the kids I know enjoyed the time at home but then cracked on with it when the schools reopened I lived in a country with extreme covid restrictions compared to the UK and I’m absolutely fine.

@BogRollBOGOF ’s post on page 2…

”Also data systems have changed increasing usage of "unauthorised" so data is not like for like.
DS2 was "unauthorised" for vomiting and following the school's 48 hour policy because I didn't try to waste mine or the GP's time to get an appointment to prove he had a temporary, minor, self-limiting illness. After a serious asthma phase (including 999 from school) and emergency surgery for another issue, school expected medical evidence for every ailment, and the GP does not have spare appointments for that kind of trivia... or indeed the escalating asthma in the first place 🤦‍♀️“

Can I just say how ridiculous and insane that state of affairs is! What are most GP’s surgeries policies if you’re experiencing vomiting and diarrhoea? They don’t want you anywhere near them! The same reasons that underpin the whole not attending school for 48 hours if you’re experiencing either. That isn’t anything new either.
Why on Earth (or actually HOW on Earth) would you be getting a GP appointment just to satisfy some bizarre eligibility criteria for your child’s absence to be recorded as authorised when they’ve been off with vomiting/diarrhoea and followed the school’s own 48 hour policy in the process? Demented.
Seeing as employees and workers can self-cert for up to 7 days - and reducing the number of people turning up to their GP to get fit notes was ultimately a reason why self-cert is a thing - it should be the same in schools for short term illness.

Unfortunately school can cause or exacerbate mental health problems in plenty of children. We need to start making schools that fit children instead of trying to force children to fit schools

I’d echo a few others on here, as the parent of a teen on fluoxetine who has missed 18 months of school and is having to drop down a year to restart GCSEs. Behaviour, crap and oppressive curriculum, lack of services (still waiting to be seen by camhs - we had to go private), inflexible and awful academies, huge numbers in school. Makes it a nightmare for kids who are struggling.

It definitely has contributed for reasons others have already stated.

From my memory, we were well into 2022 when this sort of thing was still going on:

“Then we had the ridiculous rules of a pupil having contact with their uncles next door neighbour but ones budgie who tested positive and so everyone in the class within a 10 mile radius got sent home to isolate alongside their own family members.”

Pretty sure in Wales schools were still doing this at the end of 2022 going into 2023. It was entire year groups being sent home to self-isolate too. This was despite year groups being divided into “bubbles” and the 1 pupil in the year group, who might have been in contact at some point with their uncle’s next door neighbour but one’s budgie, not actually being in contact with the majority of pupils in their year group.
I also remember entire year groups being told to not attend school because so many staff were absent due to self-isolating and there weren’t enough staff.

Something I’ve just remembered from November 2020. A guy I knew, whose daughters’ year groups were at home self-isolating for the 2nd time since September, decided he would be keeping his daughters off until January. This was despite all of the time they’d missed. I could see his logic too. It had been a nightmare for him with work because the school suddenly announced the daughters and the rest of their year group had to stay off for 10/14 days or whatever it was twice in a 3 month period. His employer agreed it was easier to assume the schools would likely do the same again before Christmas and safer to assume he had to work at home because they were at home. Of course as it turned out the schools were all shut again for months on end well into 2021 anyway.

Yes, I suppose the provision varied wildly. My own kids were literally doing 9 - 3, all lessons as normal except they were via a screen instead of face to face.
I suppose we were lucky?

School attendance rates have got worse since Covid. I think the reason is that some parents and children got used to not getting up and leaving the house and have continued this, so I agree with your change of routine theory. Nothing to do with illness or fear of illness.

I think current school are failing children… the government has made them into business who don’t care for students

😂😂😂😂 You should work for the government. It doesn’t get any more simplistic that that.

No offence but I went to school in the 90s and early 2000s and i don't remember half the things I was taught and still got a 2:1 in physics degree and git Jobs in amazing places. Knowledge gaps means jack all in the real world. Maths, English and Science ate the core subjects and what is needed in life. Knowing in what year did WW2 end is not helpful in real life and especially when obtaining work. Whenever i applied for work or even uni all they cared about is A-C in Maths, English And Science.

What kids neednto be doing now is to buikd up Interprofessional learning and development. Work placmwnts throughout the years, work experience and volunteering so they can be well adjusted social humans.