The spread of viruses and bacterial infections in schools (even those which are symptomatic almost immediately so are not spreading innocently without parents being aware that they are sending in infectious children) demonstrates very clearly that the problem of parents sending sick children to school who should not be there is far more significant than overly cautious parents keeping children at home.
Various options could be implemented, such as online learning/ teams broadcast of classes so that children who are unwell can still attend in some capacity. Online schools are very successful so this is not beyond the wit of man, given that adult manage hybrid meetings etc. as a matter of course these days. Far more sensible than sending infectious children into school, particularly at secondary level. Then they infect lots more children and staff and make the problem worse. It’s completely unnecessary. Only a selfish idiot would commute on a busy train/ go to work with a stinking cold, for example, so why would we demand children do this?
Schools need to adapt and use the technology at their disposal, which is incredibly cheap and easy to implement and even very small businesses use.
Regardless, as noted above and is clear from academic research, the vast majority of low attendance rates and protracted absence results from children with neurodiversity being forced into an education system which, if one was to set out with the aim of designing hell for such children, would closely resemble the so-called state education system on offer. These children are forced into an environment which it is KNOWN IN ADVANCE they will never be able to cope with or learn properly in and is entirely inappropriate for them.
Teachers and Local Authorities and the Government then express faux surprise when entirely predictably these children end up traumatised and have low attendance rates or are unable to attend at all.
Nationally, over 90% of recorded absence is the result of the above. Yet still no appropriate state educational provision at all is made for these children, and the system deliberately forces them to spend most of their waking life in an environment that’s traumatising for them until they become unable to access any education at all - a systemic and deliberate refusal to meet their legal right to education, which we’d be scathing of a developing country denying to a specific cohort of children. Yet apparently in the UK this is acceptable, the child/ parents should be shamed/ threatened and allegedly this will fix the issue. Gaslighting nonsense and disproved by a great deal of robust academic research, if you care to look.
So if one is rational, one would suggest that if schools or the DfE are concerned about attendance, rather than teaching children that presenteeism is important to learn for adult life (no successful business with talented staff will agree with you) and that it’s ok for children to infect their peers and this will be rewarded and celebrated, so that the school can engage in futile attempts to bump up its absence rates when actually causing more illness and more absence and validating the stance of the irresponsible parents who will even send in their child with a vomiting bug, perhaps it might serve schools, Local Authorities and the DfE well to stop coercing children and bullying parents and address the actual problem underlying the vast, vast majority of their overall attendance rate problem: that they have set up virtually NO state schools whatsoever that are appropriate for the tens of thousands of neurodiverse children who cannot and will never be able to function in a class size of 30 with noise and disruptive behaviour all day long. If they’re also bright and academic they will have more chance of an appropriate state education by going to live on the moon.
Hello large grey animal with excessively sized ears! We see you, and one day the teachers and DfE may also acknowledge your existence.