First week 'critical' to avoid children missing school later, parents told

[Bloodyscarymary]

I just saw this article in the BBC and am astounded at the daft reasoning. Apparently, students who miss days in the first week of school are more likely to be persistently absent, therefore we need a critical focus on attendance in the first week to reduce absence.

I feel like someone needs to let the DfE know that correlation does not equal causation! Surely it’s just that children with factors causing absence are more likely to miss a day in the first week than children who don’t have those factors. I am pretty sure if they took a data subset from ANY week in the year, persistently absent students would be more likely to be absent in that week than non persistently absent students!

Therefore it’s not the week that’s critical, it’s the factors driving absence we need to focus on.

I am all for having a public awareness campaign but why muddy statistics like this instead of just talking about what is actually needed to solve absence.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7jk3rr225o

I couldn’t agree with you more about this gaslighting around ‘poor parenting’ (when the reality of pushing on ‘relentlessly’ per Phillipson, with the forcing of school attendance is absolutely traumatic for our kids. Our kids wind up with much bigger problems. Solidarity with everyone dealing with this.

I also think attending in September is important - for social reasons. But the point OP is making is that it is a fallacy to claim that it impacts achievement. These kinds of claims make head teachers look stupid in the eyes of any reasonably intelligent parent.

I can't edit my post but just wanted to say if transition is handled right the rest of the year will be smoother for my child. Others may have different needs - but transition is still so important.

This!

Well it depends which private schools we are talking about. A PP was saying that private schools had longer holidays yet got better outcomes so that negated the absence advice. I was adding that there are other, additional reasons for some private schools' results.

Additionally, I am an ex-teacher who fully understands the woeful loss of support for SEN children in mainstream. The closure of specialist facilities in the name of inclusion has been a tragedy for many children (although fully supported inclusion has been great for others).
The role of some private schools in supporting these children is impressive.

However, I do agree that missing vital time in the first few weeks of the year, unless for illness, is a huge red flag as to the importance placed on education.

I was shocked when a friend of mine booked a 2 week holiday for the first 2 weeks of YEAR 7. It took her daughter a good six months to settle in school as she had missed all the inductions, friendship grouping and it really did affect her attitude when in school.

Well yes precisely "depends which private schools we are talking about" but you didn't say that. You just said many off role when that patently isn't true.

Agree with the rest though especially about loss of SEND support. It's a travesty and all Phillipson can do is talk about "grit" etc. She is horrendous.

100% OP. I thought exactly the same when I read this article.

I would guess that many absences in the first week are due to holidaying and the reduced cost by coming back in the new term. It will be the same families making those same decisions come half terms, Christmas, Easter etc, so the same kids are building up many absences from school.

I know someone in my family who does this many times throughout the school year.

The whole attendance issue needs an overhaul. Ofsted need to stop measuring schools by it. Heads need to stop obsessing about it and there needs to be more understanding of SEND pupils. It broke my heart as a teacher to see children with severe anxiety being forced into school, sitting there looking terrified each day. My own dd also had severe school anxiety (possibe asd) in the end as PPs have done we took her out in year 10 and found a small, nurturing private school with a focus on wellbeing. They do exist. It was a gamechanger. But only the privileged can afford to do that and my heart breaks for families who cannot. I had to leave teaching because the whole system is crap. And many teachers are just drongos who lack the ability to think critically about things, never question anything and seem to lack emotional intelligence. Not all, but probably the majority, sadly.

@TheGrimSmile The teachers I know (quite a few) regularly question things and would love to see change, they just don't get listened to.

Clearly this is not aimed at children who have genuine reasons for absence, it’s the school refusers, it makes sense that if they miss the first week the other children in the class will have made friendship groups that these kids aren’t part of and they will have missed work so they don’t understand what’s going on in class, so they then refuse school more because they feel lost. Consistency is key.

Clearly this is not aimed at children who have genuine reasons for absence, it’s the school refusers

Completely ignoring the fact that ‘school refusers’ are usually refusing school for a ‘genuine reason’, not just because they don’t fancy going.

I don't know if it's as machiavellian or totalitarian as that. I think its more that everyone in government & civil service is from the self selecting group of 'people who managed fine in school' so they misdiagnose the problems and don't think of imaginative enough solutions.

Well said

My daughter has to attend eating disorder clinic and a wedding this week so she's stuffed

My kids had 96% attendance and I took them out for a term time holiday. Having a few extra days off at the start or end of the holidays doesn't mean you are going to be persistently absent. It means you can't afford to pay 4x the amount of money to take your kids away.

What do you mean by ‘support’ though? Allowing absence?

Meanwhile, dozens, if not hundreds, of children won't be in school next week as they have moved house and In Year admissions doesn't work over the holidays!

Not the point of your post but I haven’t heard anyone use the term drongo in so long, my mum always used to say it and I am definitely bringing it back into my daily use because it’s brilliant 😆

How simple do you think it is to deal with the individual and changing needs of over 1000 students day-in day-out?

Schools absolutely should be doing everything they can to meet students' needs (and many are), but it's certainly very far from simple.

Plus the 1000s who have been forced out of independent schools due to VAT and haven't yet got a state school to go to.

I agree that there are lots of good reasons to attend the first week! If the article said “DfE wants to remind parents that the first week is so important to attend because it helps children settle in at a relaxed pace, make friends” or if they had a study to show that friendship groups for example were formed in first week, then that would be fine. It’s the false use of statistics apparently without controlling for any factors/comparing with other school weeks to make the claim that missing school in the first week CAUSES persistent absence rather than is correlated with persistent absence that is particularly grinding my gears this morning.

Absolutely this .Our DD ended up in hospitals number of times with a condition caused by the mental stress of being unable to attend secondary .What did the EWO do , threaten to fine us even though gp and hospital both confirmed it was stress related .I fought back and she left us alone and we did get our DD a specialist place .But the stress it put on our family was unreal .We both work and the EWO would turn up trying to bully our DS into school .The day she threatened to fine me I said I would see her in court because she caused my daughter anymore stress I would shout as loud as I could to whoever would listen .

But not every parent is able to stand up like I did and it is a real worry .Education can be caught up but mental health that can take a long time to repair .

Exactly this.

I don’t think this is the cause of persistent attendance issues but missing the first week of school is extremely disruptive for students. I would say the first week is the most important week of the year especially for transition years (year 7, year 12) especially for friendship groups.

So I can see why it might be a factor, but I imagine if a student is missing the first week, there is probably other reasons for poor attendance.

i just ignore these articles - of course it’s true: a parent who is happy to miss a few days of school at the start of term to take advantage of a cheap holiday, for example, is likely to be a parent who’ll make the same decision later in the term.

Last year dd14 missed a fair amount of school due to a serious condition (so lots of unavoidable appointments at the hospital at random times of the day, across the past three years). She has kept up her schoolwork but missed out on so much -kicked out of Netball team, left mouldering during PE due to her medical situation (they couldn’t even rustle up an arm bicycle or some hand weights so she could at least do some “keep fit” etc). So I had no qualms taking her out of school for a day trip to a museum exhibition, a summer weekend at the beach, a theatre trip relevant to her education etc.

It hasn’t affected her grades, it hasn’t disrupted class teaching in any way - but I like to think a little flexibility has maintained her mental health and shown her that not all rules make sense.