To think there is nothing wrong with saying: “School is not optional, there will be consequences if you don’t attend, and the only person this’ll impact is you?

[ThatAmberBee]

I don’t understand why some people get so upset when parents are firm about school attendance. At the end of the day, missing school only hurts the child, and they’re the ones who’ll face the consequences in the long run. Isn’t it fair to make that clear?

I know in the UK you can't but in rural Sweden the high school is completely open and anyone can walk through it.

School is awful for some kids and they won't learn much there. Thankfully, my mum didn't believe in forcing kids to go. We had study leave before exams and that's when we really studied. I get that for some kids, school is wonderful. It wasn't for me. Out of my own kids, the one that had the worst attendance record has by far the best academic qualifications

Thank you, I think so too.

Parents are allowed to attend classes with their children?

How does that sit with other parents and the teachers?

I wonder how much of this “EBSA” went on 70 years ago?

Some replies seemed defensive about the idea of being firm, so I clarified I wasn’t talking about complex cases like EBSA. As for older kids, no, you can’t carry them in but clear expectations and follow-through still matter. It’s about attitude and boundaries, not force.

@ThatAmberBeeyour post shows your ignorance of this very complex area. You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about.

Oh ok. In which case you can threaten away, and see where it gets you!

Loads - loads of truancy and lots of kids leaving school early.

So you think that the parents of school refusers have the wrong attitude and boundaries?

At his primary school parents were encouraged to spend some time sitting in classes. It's not strange here.

Yes and I bet many of them got jobs and contributed meaningfully to society, but I very much doubt the truancy rates are as high as they are now.
i have no doubt there are some cases of significant undiagnosed SEN but there’s a hell of a lot more teenagers pushing their luck because they know they can and everyone will run around in circles trying to justify it and society will support them etc etc. all it is doing is adding to the issue of long term unemployment. It’s a nonsense.

That would be 1955, most children left school at 15 and large numbers dropped out far earlier and no-one did anything about it. Many children with sen were categorised as ineducable and completely denied any education (until the education for handicapped children act in 1970)

DS2s attendance in Yr11 was about 50%. I tried too much at the beginning to make him go in and I really regret it. I picked him up a couple of times when he was crying and in a total state. I can't imagine how awful that is for a Yr11 student. Thankfully I wised up and stopped taking him, and after a significant break he identified lessons he felt able to attend, so i took him in for those. I was threatened with fines etc but they didn't follow through.
Did it affect his results? Yes. But he was too unwell and in no fit state to learn anything. I don't even know how he sat the exams tbh.

DS3 has an EHCP and it's agreed attending any school is inappropriate for him. The LA hasn't actually organised any provision for him for September. But there won't be anyone at the LA concerned about the lack of education for him

If I’d have refused to go to school, I’d have had every privilege removed (TV, magazines, everything) and not allowed to leave my room (except to go to the bathroom). There’d have been no phone calls to friends (and if mobiles had been around, I’d have had mine removed). It was made very clear to me that school was not optional, and my life would become nothing but my bedroom walls if I refused to go. And my parents meant it.
I tried to refuse school after being unwell and having to go back after 6 months off. I was terrified, on medication, still unwell and full of anxiety. But I knew I would not be allowed to do any ‘normal’ stuff if I didn’t. My parents were of the opinion that “if you can’t go to school, you aren’t well enough to socialise or leave the house”.

No, I specifically said my post wasn’t about EBSA or school refusal rooted in deeper issues. I’m talking about cases where there’s no underlying cause and it’s more about habit or testing boundaries. That’s a very different situation and I think it’s fair to treat it differently.

The better question is whether it's actually going to make any difference.

What worked for my daughter was strong messaging and getting her into therapy before we got to the point of complete school refusal. We do refresher rounds whenever I see her anxiety ramping up. I would keep her in non-stop if the therapist thought it was useful.

If you don’t have the money to nip the problem in bud you are basically screwed. the problem
is that provisioned mental health care will only step in when the child is in a persistent crisis and therefore resistant to help. It’s a ludicrous system because children are harder to treat.

The problem, of course, is that parents won't always know which category their child falls into. Outsiders even less so. Sometimes the school refusal is a sign in itself. Clearly we do not have systems robust enough to identify all DC with underlying causes well enough to reliably distinguish the two groups.

I welled up reading your post. Your story mirrors the experience we have had with my daughter, who has been home educated for a few years. She has managed to get enough GCSEs to start college in Sept.

As someone who had school anxiety for many years, I can fully empathise with all those experiencing it to. No one can judge unless they have experienced it either with themselves or their child.

What people are trying to point out, is that it isn't as easy to make that distinction as you seem to think.
And even when underlying SEN has been identified, that same approach is still the go to:
"They've got to learn the world doesn't revolve round them"
"We have to prepare them for being an adult"
"it's not fair to have one set of rules for most pupils and another for them" etc. etc.

As someone who lives in Sweden that is a load of shit, school would also be concerned by a parent who finds it appropriate to threaten their child with humiliation, rather than supporting them.

It also affects other children in the class if teachers are having to explain things to children were absent when the information was first given. But I agree with you OP.

School should only be manadatory if schools are able to adjust their teaching to meet the needs of all all their students as opposed to the one size fits all method currently in place.

You didn’t put this point in your original post though, OP, so you must have known this post would stir up emotions for many.