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?

Probably quite a bit but we shall never know as statistics weren't kept. Plus the leaving age has gone up and up (my grandparents finished school at 12!) so the whole thing goes on much longer.

@KittyHigham I don’t think many children at school are fully NT anymore, I think schools support a wide variety of children with learning or social or mental or lgbt or family background issues. There’s a wide acceptance of differences.

But adult life is pretty unsympathetic. I know we should all understand ourselves and work to our strengths, but the bank or the electricity company or your employer have a limited capacity for individualities. And scammers and unscrupulous people can take advantage of naive or uneducated people
And with loneliness the biggest risk factor for early death, you have to be able to fit in with other people.

No, all parents do not think good attendance is important. Some of them don’t care.

School is optional though. It's not compulsory.
Children can get an education in many legal ways - not just via a school.

This is just rubbish though and the evidence doesn't support you - there is an absolute crisis at the moment of MH, SEN and EBSA which schools are struggling to deal with. It's not a small amount, it's the vast majority of those who have issues going in.

As a parent also going through this, this kind of misinformed opinion makes trying to deal with it so much harder.

A lot.
Truant Officers were a thing. Children have always played hooky. Some of that would have been EBSA.
And remember the school leaving age used to be lower so children could escape it at an earlier age.

I have had many many attendance letters. I can tell you that they all had a negative effect on DDs attendance as they would increase the pressure/stress of attending.

In DDs primary there were student who had poor attendance. Not their fault but the parents. Parents who had bad experiences in school themselves and can’t see why it’s important.

It's not about accepting differences. That's a cop out, even if I believed it to be true. And stating "I don’t think many children at school are fully NT anymore" is nonsense and unhelpful.

I'm saying that for a significant number of ND students, the most successful way of equipping them to ultimately deal with utility companies, employment and socialising etc, is not by simply forcing them act like NTs. It is by learning to understand themselves first. Then understand how NTs work, so they can understand how to approach those challenging situations most effectively. I know of so many young autistic adults who went through education and got by by masking, conforming and trying everything to go under the radar. They'd probably be deemed "successes". But the process has taken it's toll on them and has not prepared them to be autistic adults. No-one can live long term by trying to mask. Mental health problems and rates of suicide are 7 times higher than in the NT population.

@KittyHigham I don’t think there are that many NTs anymore. So many of my children’s friends are diagnosed with autism, ADD/ADHD or anxiety. It’s completely normal to have accommodations at school. It’s not rare or unusual, which is good.

I do think you have to understand yourself and not work against yourself and your character and born differences. I also think secondary school is a huge trigger for unhappiness in learning and mental health struggles for one reason or another. The drop off in love of learning and happiness from primary school is huge.

Maybe we are talking about different groups of children, I don’t think people talk about spectrums anymore. But I do think being as educated as possible, and exposed to as many different people as possible will set you up for adult life more. And resilience is a core strength for life. Life is tough. It’s only going to get tougher.

Completely agree with the op

I have worked in education for 20 years. I stand by what I said. There’s a large percentage of kids who can’t be bothered to go to school and parents who assist them. The Head of Wellbeing at my school fully agrees with me.

There’s also a large contingent who are a bit anxious. It’s a social contagion as much as anything else. Especially with girls.
It’s also about the current fashion for nothing be difficult or challenging. Tbf this isn’t just a child thing, there are plenty of adults who can’t cope with setbacks or criticism without having loads of time off too.

I am a teacher too, for thirty years and would have entirely agreed with you until 3 years ago when both of mine, for different reasons developed EBSA. Its the hardest and most frightening thing I have every had to deal with and unless you have parented through it you don't get to say who is just kids being a bit weak and flaky. Both of mine loved school and wanted to be there - were distraught that they COULDN'T go. They were at home, lonely, bored and miserable, despite having access to tech and pets. I said this upthread but any response to the OP's question that doesn't acknowledge that there are myriad different reasons, some better than others, for school absence is facile at best.

This is very true. The problem comes, in my view, when the child is existing in a limbo state where they are neither going to school nor doing any of the other options. I understand that it is much more difficult at primary age due to supervision needs, but at secondary level I think children might often be better served by the various adults involved if people stopped trying to get them into school and focused on providing better alternatives (independent study supported by online school, tutors, smaller home-ed-style courses, etc. or -if only they were available- a SEN / AP specialist setting).

My dad used to send me to school even if I was ill. Once he sent me in with flu. I wasn't as strict with my children as we took them out of school for holidays. They learnt an awful amount about ancient Greece.

Next year we'll be going on holiday with Dd and her family. We'll pay any fine the school levy. Again we'll be doing museums and general sight seeing.

Your expectations are based on the flawed assumption that missing school only hurts a child when the truth is that missing school doesn’t always hurt the child - sometimes going to school hurts the child.

The long term consequences of missing school are also not so definite. For some children it absolutely benefits them, for others it does not.

It is dishonest to pretend there is only one result of a child missing school.

The problem is that you have no idea if there is an underlying issue if you don’t look into why the child is unhappy at school, skipping school, refusing to go and overstating the importance of school by saying it will hurt you more in the long run if you don’t go is just more pressure on them when the reality is there are other options to get an education. It’s the easy path for a parent to basically attempt to scare their DC into going to school by saying “it only hurts you” to not go and warning them of “long term consequences” “academically, socially” as in if you make your bed you will have to lie in it… so the DC is more scared of ruining their life than whatever is at school or wrong with school.

I personally found that chilling and not funny at all.

Do you often find parents threatening and then ‘following through’ with extreme public humiliation of their 11yr olds for an entire day humorous?

So the chronic lack of stable, secure work with pay high enough to live hand to mouth isn’t a factor?

I mean we can’t exactly send 14yr olds down the mine shafts or to the shipyard these days! 70yrs ago wasn’t some golden age

Plus 70yrs ago was after two generations of men had been decimated by world wars, there were so many vacant jobs we were shipping in the Windrushers.

But you don't know the difference, and forcing will make it worse in many situations.

Overall, I think you should stop judging other parents from your position of very limited knowledge and experience. You just don't know enough about other families to cast judgment.

Things look simple when you don't know the details.

What country is this school? They let random adults wander around the school do they? That is so dangerous

Yes and an academic education was heavily discouraged for girls…so they weren’t even considered truant if they stopped going at age 11+

@Gymrabbit well our local authority clearly has a different view giving the pilot programmes they are running to address EBSA in order to try to understand the root cause of why so many children CANT (not won't) attend. See pp above, who would have had the same view as you until her own children went through this.

This is not 'a little bit of anxiety' (how patronising and reductive) it's a serious issue that has huge MH implications for both children and their parents trying to navigate this.

I haven't come across any parents who 'can't be bothered' to send their kids but through this programme I have met countless other parents trying to support their children to access education, and often facing ignorant educational staff members like you who levy judgement at parents because this is beyond the realms of their own understanding or experience.

My son will be ok, and will get an education, and we are spending time, money, and a lot of effort to ensure that. But not everyone is in our position and faces the implicit or often overt judgement from the community that should be supporting them.

Yep. Kids not being in school much has long been a thing.

Then later on, it was actually the Blair government who really tackled and prioritised school attendance, and persistent absence rates went down a lot in the 00s. People often forget how relatively recent that process was. The social consensus we had on school attendance on the eve of the pandemic wasn't long established at all. With that in mind, it shouldn't surprise anyone that it didn't survive interference.

Yes i remember so many people leaving school, you could exit the site whenever and registers weren't taken in individual lessons, so people would register then go into town, back for lunch.

When DD2 had EBSA, I was well set up for it. My older DD has SEN so I had been in the world of EHCPs for over 10 years. I had an ongoing supportive thread on MN that I've posted on (on and off) for 17 years, with knowledgeable people who I also meet up with in real life. It was still incredibly scary. But I knew enough to say 'enough' and to make sure DD2's voice was heard, and that I did all that I needed to do to make sure she got her educational needs met. She stopped attending school altogether (I was told to stop trying to make her attend by her year head) in the October of year 10 and she got a special school place in the following September after going through the EHCP process.

By contrast, there was a boy in her year group whose mother probably has some SEN herself. She could not advocate for him. She did not have the ability to deal with intimidating processes. She ended up with the threat of a school attendance order, then deregistered her DS to 'home educate' when it was clear that she didn't have any ability to do so.

I don't for one second think that her DS was in any less of a state than my DD. He wasn't 'truanting'. He just had a mother who couldn't fight.