“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.

What is the number of people doing this?

It was like that here in the UK when I was at school in the 1980s.

It sounds like your educational system has kept their common sense; whereas ours has put theirs in a trebuchet and fired it into the back of beyond.

It's also unpleasantly ironic how many children who are the victims of bullies are just too frightened to come in to face them - when schools dismiss, gaslight and insist that they don't have any bullying and/or the victim "just needs to learn resilience" - and then guess who gets punished and blamed for it...?

I wonder what has made the UK system change so drastically? In Ireland, I think you can miss upwards of 20 unexplained days before there is any sort of formal referral, it seems to be so much less in the UK? And, I need to look into the stats, but anecdotally our school refusal rate seems much, much lower.

I’ve read threads on here about people missing family weddings and other important life events because they can’t take the children out of school, it’s all just so bizarre. Our children are OURS, not property of the DofE!

PS thank you for the new word - Had never come across a trebuchet before!

And what’s wrong with having a random day off now and again? Our children work hard at school and, unlike us working adults, have mandated work to do at home AFTER their day is done. As far as I’m concerned, if my DC wants a MH day or rest day once in a while, I see nothing wrong with that. (As long as they are otherwise working hard to achieve their potential)

It’s not an a UK thing though, I’ve never had any problems taking my kids out in Scotland. The school are clear they don’t give work away with them which is fair enough but I’ve never had the nonsense that gets served south of the border.

Ah, my apologies, just an England thing then!

Definitely an issue in England - not sure about Wales.

PP has said it’s not an issue in Scotland.

I’ve moved to NI from England and its actually a bit of an eye opener how much some people take kids out of school for holidays.

I do think there is merit to working with families when attendance is poor to try to understand the reasons behind it, in case any can be helped. For little ones if parents are juts not bothering to bring their kids to school that is an issue. But you might have parents struggling with their own health or that of one of their other children which means their other children miss out. People living in poverty may have no clean uniform on a given day.
Schools could be signposting for support instead of draconian approaches. I really detest the way some of the big academy trusts are run.

Absolutely, couldn’t agree more. Here, if there’s a bunch of unexplained absences, you’ll get a friendly call from the principal or school secretary to check in, which is 100% correct. I’d imagine, in many instances, the school team who see the child day in and out will already have an idea if these absences are potentially the sign of a wider issue or maybe just a tough period for the family that the school could potentially support them through. But the schools here in Ireland don’t just send blanket threats, fines etc if your child has missed X amount of days. The English system is completely ludicrous imo.

Surely most parents work these days? So a primary-age child can't just randomly take a day off because "they feel like it?"

When classmates comes to school with a cold, my asthmatic dd ends up at home on steroids. These campaigns are counter-productive.

My son is in ‘red’ according to an email from school. His godfather does the first day they went back in September- his cousin is this best friend- the whole thing was really traumatic for us so we spent a day or two with them.
Then he got a knee infection (no, no idea either) he couldn’t bear weight and had a black potato sized / shaped lump on his knee. We took him to GP who referred him to hospital who sent him to a specialist unit.
Then be had flu. Proper flu. I had it at the same time - this is the first week in 5 weeks I’ve not panicked that the griping pain in my stomach doesn’t mean I am about to poo myself and that I’ve not fallen asleep every time I sat down.
I have not been able to travel for business, for a month, purely because I cannot rely on my stomach.
it is insane that school have emailed to say he is at risk of not being able to take part in their ‘leavers’ programme as he’s on ‘red’.

It’s a terrible idea, very cruel to children with health issues or other difficult situations, as well as incredibly irresponsible. It will directly lead to more children getting ill, and more children developing chronic illnesses.

Children can’t stay off school with every sniffle though?

When schools are shut down for a "deep clean" because someone went in and gave everyone norovirus, it seems insane to demand that ill children go in.

Our now Academy prevents end of term treats for anyone whose attendance that term isn’t 98% .
if you have been ill, or had medical appointments, this is not disregarded, you miss the treats the others get.
Hence my child sitting in a classroom with 5 others as they’d been off with chest infection, whilst the others had pizza from a van the school brought in .

Another time he was on a school,trip, when his friend who’d been off sick was excluded, for that reason.

completely unfair and embarrassing for them

Well that’s going to be hard my son since he’s having surgery next week and will be off for the entire month! They’re already telling me I need his specific recovery time off in writing (with evidence) so I don’t get fined - yes because everyone who has surgery always recover at the exact same time

I was living in the UK 25 years ago and reading the papers. I think the catalyst was the high number of Muslim parents who would take their family back to the rural village of origin for possibly up to two years, the children would receive very little to no education while there and, upon returning to the uk, would be sent to school as if nothing had changed. But in the course of those years, much had been missed and much had been lost.

So, in response to, the government had to make it more uncomfortable to leave than to stay.

I think I noticed and remembered because it’s so different to Australia. Kids are taken out of school all the time, to do a lap of the country, home schooling is picked up a normal course of events and they just go back to school when they come home. But the state education departments are set up here to make it easy.

Ohhhh dont i have 3 children b14 g11 g10 my youngest daughter has terrible anxiety (myself and narcissist violent husband he is DCs dad have split and things have been very hard) Dd does not like school and will cry or say she is unwell I have the attendance officer on my case constantly to the point she has made my mental health really bad .... texts at 7am is DD going to school today... any issues let me know.... I think your struggling let me know.... can I call to see you today.... even turned up down my mothers!!!

Is this a recent thing? Or is it just some schools? My DC are early 20s and didn’t have this nonsense at primary or secondary school.

I get that attendance is an issue for some schools but this just punishes DC for things outside their control like illness or lax parenting.

We got a letter (sent out to all parents in Year 9) where they really jumped the shark and said "We know you will appreciate how every second of your child's school day is essential".

I'm not sure how many hours they think it takes to make a second, but yesterday, the class had a whole French lesson with a supply teacher who didn't speak any French. Complete waste of everybody's time - but apparently it was 'essential'.

I presume the government has already budgeted in advance for all of the prison places that will be needed for every child who should have been school during covid, who will undoubtedly all end up leading pointless, wasted, thick, morally bankrupt lives and surely turn to crime, as they've never learned any better.

This winds me up. My sons school do a top 25 treat but it includes attendance which my son cant ever get 100 percent on as he has diabetes and when he has ketones they cannot look after him it goes down as authorised but hes always punished as he cant get the attendance or top 25 treats despite working really hard in school hes one of their top pupils performance wise! Its a system designed to punish the disabled children.

I think schools have always taken a hard line against children arbitrarily bunking off of their own accord - working alongside the (usually also furious) parents; BUT if it was sanctioned by parents, the parents' word and decision for their own child was fully respected.

Nowadays, the schools think that they are the parents, and they treat both the children who miss school for any reason at all (even time in hospital) AND their actual parents as wayward, naughty, deceitful, foolish idiots.

And as for those pass-agg, patronising 'statistics' they trot out - about how e.g 95% attendance sounds good, but it actually means the equivalent of missing half a school day every single fortnight... yes, dears, we do know that - plenty of us parents had mastered very basic maths years before many of you were even born.

This is endemic and it needs a big group of parents of disabled children with the time, money and determination to take one school to court as a high-profile example to the rest.

Absolutely nobody would defend for a moment a school that automatically punished and excluded children for being black, or Muslim, or gay.

What part of basic protected characteristics and equality do they not understand? And these are the places assuming that they are infinitely more capable of teaching our children than we are.

Personally, I'd be very happy indeed not to have them teaching my child their nasty bigoted mindset that we should actively discriminate against disabled people and deliberately exclude them and treat them as second-class citizens.

That is insane. How dare they? People are losing their humanity. DD2 got a school attendance award this half term - 100%. It’s the congratulations, you avoided norovirus award.