“No days off November”

[Quipto]

AIBU to think some schools have lost the plot over attendance? I think attendance awards are a lazy way of avoiding the myriad of reasons attendance is an issue, downplay serious issues, ignore the main reason for absence (illness) and discriminate against children with health conditions. This ‘no days off November’ when covid and flu are already kicking arse seems insane.

This stuff winds me up. My daughter already has two appointments booked in at Great Ormand St for November. Having a serious health condition is not a choice. She would much rather be at college.

She once had 16 hospital appointments in two months and her school threatened us with a referral to social services.

I think kids should be in school and too many people take them on holiday for "educational experiences" or let them have lazy/sofa days.

Imagine saying to the parents in some countries where they're working two jobs each to send their son to school, and their daughter is denied an education that "oh little Cadence here is having a tough time at her free, world class educational establishment, so we're letting her have a few days off to rest"

Its infuriating.

Ridiculous faff that stresses already desperate parents of children with serious health conditions, special needs, and lead to parents sending their children in to pass D&V bugs around to everyone else.

No attempt to differentiate between parents who obviously just can't be arsed to get their dc to school repeatedly for flimsy reasons, and punishing those with medical needs or disabilities, means it is utterly pointless.

It damages positive relationships between parents and the school, and end up with most explaining to their dc that it is all essentially bullshit,and of course they are not 'naughty' for being disabled/ having cancer/ throwing up and having to have time off.

I’d respect a school that tries to remove barriers to attendance where possible. This type of thing though makes me think the school encourage more pupils and teachers to be unwell and penalise those children already going through a difficult time. The children/parents who simply ‘can’t be arsed’ aren’t going to be motivated by these awards and statistically the number of children/parents like that is so tiny anyway as to make hardly any difference. It assumes or pretends to assume that there are large swathes of parents/pupils (and teachers I suppose as absence in teachers has risen in line with pupil absence) just deciding not to go to school on a whim. The schools that do these types of awards may as well hold a placard up saying they are ignorant.

I hate any kind of attendance competition.

It puts pressure on the kind of kids that want to be perfect (who could probably actually do with a day off sometimes), the ones that are ill miss out through no fault of their own, and the ones with parents who don't care don't stand a chance anyway, so who is it there to encourage?

I live in Ireland now, and they have a reasonable approach to school - eg. the year after lockdowns, I'd booked to go and see Father Christmas in Lapland, so I spoke to the head and cleared them being out of school for a week before hand to make sure they didn't catch anything and have to stay home. She fullu agreed that the time off would be fine (there'd been a lot of other stuff going on too, plus the kids were doing well at school anyway) - whereas a head in the UK doesn't have the ability to do that.

A holiday is 10 days at the most. Sofa days? What sort of people do you know? Because most parents have to work!

I’m so sorry.

I'm glad we didn't have this shit when mine were school age.
Luckily none of them were absent much but dd was a stickler for rules and would have been determined to go if the teachers had pressed the point even when unwell.
I think though if I had been threatened with ss I would have told them to go ahead and waste everyone's time and money.
As pps have said parents who do their best will still do that and parents who don't bother will not suddenly start giving a toss.

Very stupid idea. Yanbu.

If a lot of kids in a particular school are frequently absent, other than for illness, I would wager that the school is probably not a very nice place to be. Maybe they should look at fixing that.

I work in a secondary school before anyone starts the "you don't know what it's like" stuff. I do actually

I hate this stuff i was a really ill kid spent a significant amount of time in gosh multiple surgeries etc. I never won the prizes and trips others won for 100% attendance. It actually makes me so angry for disabled and unwell kids but even healthy kids do they really want kids with gastroenteritis and other illnesses coming into school. If your ill your ill where all human and we all get sick and thats ok and shouldn't miss out because of it

@RessicaJabbit I agree kids should be in school but please tell me how my DD can be in school while hooked up to an infusion drip once every 6 weeks or seeing her Gastro consultant/ rhematologist, physio , occupational health, psychiatrist etc.

She never ever has a sick day - all of her school/college absence is for planned medical appointments and treatments that stop her becoming too ill to attend school. But we still got threatened with a referral to social services. I would also have been referred if I didn't take her to the appointments so we can't win.

I think it’s classic DfE confusing correlation and causation. There is strong evidence that those with better attendance achieve better results. Therefore they think attendance is the cause. I suspect it’s that kids who attain well are happier in school and therefore less likely to be absent. Just a thought though - haven’t looked at the data.

I agree OP. If you have flu, you can’t go to school. No one chooses to get flu as a way of avoiding school.

My dd has low attendance due to a very severe injury she sustained at school during a PE lesson. Perhaps the school understand how serious the problem is, school has never griped to me about her poor attendance due to hospital visits, and my dd has worked hard to stay on top of her classwork. The school have worked together with me to help dd access lessons and the cooperation has been so helpful.

Id have found it very annoying to be warned about her attendance just as a matter of policy - I think it’s appropriate and possible for each case to be considered individually.

@RessicaJabbit What strikes me is does the person sending these warnings think “this is a stupid waste of everyone’s time, it’s blindingly obvious why this poor child can’t be in school.”

My dd school was the opposite - so it proves it is possible for a school to behave with common sense and dare I say, sympathy. I sent school a letter explaining the course of DD’s treatment and the fact we couldn’t always pick appointment times (you go when the NHS tells you to, and it takes an hour to get to my DD’s hospital, park, and get to the right department). School replied “fine just keep us informed” and they also reorganised so that dd was able to be taught in accessible classrooms every single day. It meant she could access all her lessons at school without risk of pain or injury. And they also gave her two “lunch passes” so she and a friend could skip the queue and she didn’t have to stand and wait. And two passes so she and a friend could stay quietly in a classroom at lunch or break if she needed to be inside.

My dd loves going to school and she works so hard - she has given back to them in academic energy what they have given her in their kindness and support.

I feel so sad when I hear about situations where kids don’t get this same good treatment. These are children, often very sick children, and too many schools treat them little work-shy criminals.

I haven’t heard of this, is it a DofE thing or at your school? Our primary doesn’t do any awards for attendance which is a good job given DD’s health issues last year. They’ve only ever been 100% supportive of her and me when she’s been ill.

@AnneLovesGilbert it’s common particularly at some strict academy primary schools. Presenteeism at its finest!

I think it’s unfair on the children. They can’t help being unwell or being off school for whatever reason. It’s the same as the children who are late every day it’s not their fault at 4 years old.

Drives me nuts. My son has kids in his class who are disabled, in higher numbers than other years. They are off regularly. My son started blaming them for his class never getting the attendance award. Standard reaction from a 6yo and shit that the disabled children were being blamed when they are in fact blameless! I had to have a long chat with him and he now tells his teachers 'my mum said attendance awards are stupid anyway' 🤦🏽‍♀️

@NotDeliathat school sounds sensible thankfully.

And how do these children achieve good attendance? Through having engaged parents. Parents who support their children’s education, support good behaviour in class (and probably out of school as well), show their children that they value their children’s education, show active interest in their children’s education.

Sorry, I quoted the wrong post. I had intended to reply to this post.

This was not from DfE, although it’s the sort of lazy nonsense they’d put out too. This was from Star Radcliffe Academy.

This is obviously not aimed at children who have illnesses that necessitate multiple appointments or periods of absence.

It's about the ones who just have a random day off when they don't feel like coming in. The number of these is too great and it's only causing trouble.

But it's not, though. As we've already seen clearly upthread, schools fire out the threatening and judgmental letters regardless of the reason.

My DS's school recently sent out a letter (to all parents) where they acknowledged that some children do sometimes have legitimate reasons for not attending, but they actually said that 'this will still count against them'.

It's absolutely disgusting - and very frequently blatant ableism. It reminds me of the equally nasty, openly prejudiced and anti-diversity, anti-equality schools I've read of more than once who have actually told off and threatened to punish black kids for having very normal Afro hairstyles.

Honestly, I’m always baffled by the threads on here about UK school attendance, about warning letters, fines and referrals to social services. I’m in Ireland and we have very little of this nonsense but arguably a better education system and educational outcomes than the UK. Of course, if a child is missing an extraordinary amount of school days, the school will speak with the parents, raise safeguarding concerns if required etc. but we don’t have this level of ridiculous control. And we certainly don’t have nonsense awards or challenges around attendance.

For example, if I want to take my DC out for a week’s holidays here and there, I do. I inform the school we’ll be on holidays and they say ‘Oh lovely, have a nice time’. Admittedly my DC is academic and does very well at school, I also don’t take them out at key times during the year. But equally, I’ll be damned if a school thinks they can tell me when I can and cannot allow my DC to be off school. It’s all so alien to us here.