AIBU to not understand how "school refusers" are a thing?

[Idontunderstandmodernlife]

There seems to be a lot of parents that have children that they simply can't get to go to school no matter what they do - these children are often called "school refusers". Parents say they have done absolutely everything to get their child into school but nothing works.

I hate to be that "in my day" person but I simply don't get where these "school refusers" have come from because they simply didn't exist a decade or 15 years ago. Kids just went to school. I never knew of a child that simply didn't turn up most of the time when I was in school? now there seems to be one in every class

What has changed that parents are now finding it impossible to get their child to school? Have schools got that much worse? are parents more lenient? are children more forceful? has children's mental health declined? what is it?

She was desperate to be educated. Hardworking, quiet, ambitious. Would cry about her education and how much she wanted it and wanted to go.

But couldn’t cope with: Having to answer questions ( mute) noise, lights, loud teachers who scared her, being too anxious to ask for help, too anxious to listen, whiteboards causing migraines. All this caused severe anxiety and depression and she just became too unwell to go.

Shes at university now. Rigid secondary school was just too much for her. She did an access course where she could walk out whenever she wanted and was much better. These kids want flexibility not the current rigid rule based system we have now.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-impact-of-school-absence-on-lifetime-earnings

Some research from the Department of Education

But you're sure as hell arguing with everyone who's challenging your highly judgemental posts.

You are though. Kids bunked off often because there was someone at home. Now both parents tend to work kids just refuse to leave the house at all.
And all those kids bunking off, their parents couldn't get them in either.
School attendance is actually increasing where I live.
I've been a School refuser and supported parents of School refusers. It is really hard to change it.

Well mine’s at university.

Is she a write off? She’s doing Maths at a redbrick.

Just to add my experience... DS is autistic and stopped going to school in Y7, just before COVID. The following four years were the most traumatic and stressful of my life. The threats of prosecution, the utter despair of how to help him, the devastation of him missing out on life... It was hell.

We tried absolutely everything. We saw every professional we could think of, went on courses, read books, removed devices, shouted, hugged, chatted, spoke of his dreams for the future.

However, the fact is, he simply couldn't face the noise, the crowds, the sensory overload of school. He spent his days asleep in bed.

I'm a teacher. DH and I both value education. However, schools are simply not equipped to support certain children. No matter what we did, he wouldn't go.

My DS ended up leaving in Y10 and attended a specialist college, where he did well. The following year he left and went to mainstream college, where it all went downhill again. They refused to let him resit his GCSEs. We have spent a lot of money on tutors and exams. People think you have to do GCSE resits until 18. You don't. The LA doesn't care.

DS is now looking for a job, with the help of a support worker. How he will achieve this with very few qualifications, I don't know. He is such a bright young man, with an amazing general knowledge and a lot of ambition, although lacks confidence.

Anyway, to answer the OP, as others have said, these young people have always been around, you just didn't hear of it. I never thought I would have a child who refused to go to school, but I did. To anyone who thinks that it's a certain type of family who has a school refuser, it's really not.

I went to school in the 1960s and 1970s.

I'm now 69.

I was diagnosed with autism four years ago, and this helped me to make sense of my life.

I was a school refuser all those years ago. School frightened me and I was bullied a great deal. I was academically very able.

School refusal definitely existed way back in the 60s and 70s.

I daresay your weren't born then, though, so you wouldn't know about that.

@Supersimkin7

Have you read any of the threads on here or just marched in with your ‘expert’ opinion? You have just described my daughter and 1000s like her as a ‘write off’ . It is absolutely nothing to do with permissive parenting. As other parents have said on here (and every other EBSA parent bashing post on here) it’s a complete waste of your time commenting on something you clearly have no first hand experience of.

My DD couldn’t (yes couldn’t - not wouldn’t) go into school for the best part of 4 years. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with. Utterly despairing, isolating and terrifying. She also attempted to take her life 3 times. Largely because of school related anxiety.

There are many other parents and their DCS like mine to varying degrees.

I was in touch with the school consistently and tried every single thing I could do to get her back into school until she could no longer leave her bedroom due to anxiety and depression due to the pressures of school.

There are hundreds of thousands of cases like mine up and down the country with parents battling to get their kids into school or when that’s no longer possible for the sake of their mental health trying to get these kids the support they do desperately need.

Your comment is highly offensive and wholly inaccurate.

And for the record, now she is 18 she has a job that she is fantastic at and is a whole different person. She is a tax payer and contributes to society.

Most importantly, she is happy and thriving now she is out of the school system. So no. Not a write off.

@SpringTimeIsRingTime
‘That will depend on their family circumstances.
If they are from a poor background, they are most likely going to end up in dead-end low-paid jobs for life. If they are from a well-off background, the world is their oyster. Stephen Fry went to jail but "turned his life around" unlike most men who go to jail... Family background matters a lot more than school or uni.’
This is so true, I was reading the other day about Lord (!) Toby Young (of Free Schools fame) who failed his O levels but still got into Oxford.
I doubt that would have happened if he had come from the same council estate as me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Young

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow That’s the point - we only hear about the exceptions who recover over the years. Well done DD.

Most SR wouldn’t comment here - they can’t.

DofE 2025 says:

One day of additional absence between Years 7 to 11 for a typical student was
associated with an approximate £7505 (2024 prices) loss in future earnings,
discounted to present value terms6
.
• One day of absence for persistently absent pupils, who miss more than 10% of
their possible sessions, was associated with a £6507 future earnings loss (2024
prices, present value discounted terms).
We also use a different dataset, which links earnings and academic records, to test if
there is a direct association between KS4 absence and a range of future labour market
outcomes.
• We find a one day increase in absence in Years 10 and 11 is associated with a
0.8% decrease in total yearly pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) earnings and declared self-
employed earnings at age 288
.
• We find the likelihood of being in receipt of benefits increases by 2.7 times for
pupils who are classified as persistently absent (>10% absence). This rises to 4.2
times for those who are classified as severely absent (>50% absence).
• The likelihood of being in sustained employment for 12 months decreases by
approximately 60% for pupils who are classified as persistently absent and
approximately 75% for those who are classified as severely absent.

I'm 35 and schools rarely called parents and ours wasn't locked. I used to go to registration then go into town or my older boyfriend's house or wherever to avoid school. It was a choice between staying home with a mother who beat me or being in school where one of my teachers was a paedophile (he got a 2 year suspended sentence in the end but this was after I'd already left that school).

I bet it was back in your day OP that Autism/SEN didn't exist...... I have a 5yo with ASD, every day is a battle to get him to school because he can't cope with transition. It doesn't matter what time he wakes up, what I do in the morning, he can be totally rigid. Which was OK when he was younger. In the past I've carried him like a surf board to school whilst being hit, kicked, spat at etc. Now he weighs 17.5kg which means that I can't carry him, I cant always stop the punches, kicks and when he's completely rigid, he's immovable. Very hard for someone with NT kids to empathise with or understand because from the outside he looks like every other kid, but he isn't. Once he gets to school he's fine and I make sure he goes but I'm lucky- I work for myself, I can be flexible/late for work. However I have no idea how I will manage as he gets older, and bigger.
I have 1 friend with 2 autistic kids who are now home schooled because school cannot cater to their needs. They are unable to provide an environment in which the kids feel happy/safe enough to be there. One child has autism but also has OCD and will pick his skin until it bleeds - when he's very anxious. He cannot cope with loud noises, lots of people. The other child is non verbal in school and cannot communicate her needs. The mum has spent 3 years trying to get a diagnosis but each time been rejected, passed on because the threshold for a test where she lives is to have a totally non verbal child with suspected ASD. The school only has 1 assistant floating across the whole year group and there are 30 kids in a class.
There are many school refusers but they are not refusing school because they are bad or don't want to go. They refuse because they can't go, physically or mentally they cannot go. They are being let down. And it's not fair to blame parents who are also being let down without the right support to help get their kids to school.

That just says work fails these people as much as schools.

I'm glad your DD did well enough to go to uni. How did she learn her a levels? Self taught, homeschool?

I could have written your post 💐

You worry your children might not make friends, or be bullied, or struggle with the work … you never think they won’t go in.

I actually find it very hard to even speak about the whole experience now. I’m so devastated for what our child went through. He’s a bright, funny, caring, lovely young adult who’s managed to hang onto his friendship group. We’re helping him navigate his way into work with no qualifications and little time at secondary school.

The Head of his secondary school admitted to us that they had failed our son. That’s no comfort now, and I doubt the school has been able to support subsequent students like my son any better.

You’re right - society changed and machines replaced most unskilled labour a long time ago. Care work’s on the up, but that’s it.

No society pays a debt it doesn’t owe.

I can remember in the early 80,s a girl in my village her mom had to literally drag her to school everyday walking, small village school her sister went no problems.

in my experience the schools i attended were good (or so it seemed to me) at steering children/teens into vocational training if academic subjects were not their strength.
teen girls could go into hairdressing, sewing and secretarial training from grade 9-10 and the boys had 3 different shop options; motor, machine, and carpentry.
sadly severely nd children were institutionalized during this period.
i had heard of truant officers but zero encounter with any.

The medical profession are great for coming up with labels - I'm not sure these labels are very useful or helpful to the children involved. Everything is genetic according to the medical industry and big pharma - the fact that that plays to their financial advantage is purely coincidental.

There are many completely different reasons why children refuse to go to school. For some it's due to bullying from other children or teachers. For others it may be just sitting still in a room for hours on end seems like a form of torture (probably more boys). Some parents mollycoddle their children so they have no resilience and any little upset floors them. Some parents didn't get a good education themselves and don't place much value on their child attending school as a result. Some children may be suffering from childhood trauma diagnosed or not.

Smart phones and social media seem to be having a very negative impact on children for a whole variety of reasons. Apps and games are designed to be addictive so they provide lots of distractions and constant immediate gratification - which is why so many teenagers spend entire evenings playing them but struggle to do homework for an hour (if at all). It's far worse than TV.
I'm pretty sure this is driving "ADHD" behaviours in many (not all) children.

Covid certainly made vulnerable children more anxious than they would have been.

From my own experience my 9 stone very strong 11year old autistic son with very limited understanding can refuse his school transport a few times a week. There’s no way of moving him, he lies on the floor as a dead weight and I can’t lift him. It sometimes takes me 3 hours to get him to school and then drive away from school with the help of 3 or 4 teachers as he will grab hold of me and my clothes, refuse to get out from the car or crawl under the car etc on the worst days but I have always managed to get him there and me to work at some point thankfully. I do worry one day it may just be impossible to get him there. School give him sensory rewards when he gets to school which do help. My younger 2 would never refuse to go to school, they are neurotypical and easy going children. If I only had my younger children as my experience of school children I would also be baffled how children are classed as school refusers but having experience of my eldest I really sympathise with the parents. I’m just lucky my boss is amazing and lets me make up my hours on the good days.

And often boys mask, or exhibit differently. ie
I'm looking back and wondering about the "rebels" that skipped and ended up doing/selling drugs.

I didn’t go much. Year 7 was less than 60% and it got much worse. I had older friends and a roaring social life, a boy friend at uni and lots of mates with cheap bed sits. I turned up for a few months before GCSEs and got mainly As so bugger all regrets really! I could never face all the sitting still - still can’t. What I do remember is no one gave a shit. It only came up once a year on reports!