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?

OP, I wanted to offer you some perspective from a parent who has been there.
my dc is in year 10 (first year of GCSE). In year 7 they were given a target score for GCSEs and ever since been assessed against that score. The current education system requires teachers to think about data, much less about children.
Assessments are every week. Not in each subject, but they are revising every week. They are forced to do 3 sciences whether they have an aptitude for science or not. There are 300 children in every year. 300 per year!!! My child’s head of year told me that he didn’t know my child, had never met them, as they are well behaved in school. He only had time for the ones who misbehave. There are teachers now in GCSE years who don’t know their name.
when my child started missing school, the help
was non existent. They were ill, often caused by anxiety, and missed loads of school. We are educated middle class parents in professional jobs, who value education, but our very bright child just could not go, could not cope with the number of people, nowhere to have lunch or hang a coat, obsession with uniform inspections, no one having a clue who my child is, and constant pressure of assessments. This school is considered excellent, and people move house to get into it.
my child is always going to struggle, but is now managing much better, attending mostly. It’s not about the children in my opinion, it’s a completely broken education system, trying to fit all children into one education pathway that doesn’t suit everyone, with schools that are too big, and teachers who are overstretched.
My child has some amazing teachers, and one in particular has helped her turn things around. But they have been underpaid and undervalued for so long, and the academy system means there’s less oversight of schools.
I hope that gives some insight into what’s going on.

Well thank fuck we have you around to give Tory anecdote of what is wrong with "all school refusers you know".
If only we had you around before our kids refused to go.

But realistically you know that all the people you make up not even a percentage of the planet so you really don't know what happens in some households.

But good for you that you can sit and spout your shit and didn't have to deal with this.
Funny how you know all about it when you never had one.... Must feel wonderful.

(Equally all the cunts I know of sit on mumsnet and tell everyone how much they know about something they didn't have to deal with themselves... Same same.)

This is an interesting comment considering the thread is absolutely packed with people describing their experiences (personal and family) of school refusing/avoidance/phobia from before the days of personal portable screens.

Sorry, meant the comment it was responding to.

I quoted the OP not all the multitude of other posters so let the pearls go.
It wasn't directed at you but take your offense where you need to...
And read my last line.

I assure you that I do understand anxiety on a professional and personal level. More than most people ever will. I've known people who make the level of anxiety that girl you know has seem mild.

Obviously he can't make me stay unless he hangs around, which school would never permit. Whether it would be worth what would wait for me at home if I didn't stay however, is another thing. Unless I didn't go home, I guess. It comes down to what is the bigger anxiety - school, what my father was capable of, or running away.

It might have been good if he had manhandled me to school, as I'm sure that would have resulted in some sort of needed intervention.

When I was little my mum always used to sing me Flowers are Red by Harry Chapin which was a song about how a boy went to school and wanted to colour flowers all different colours but his teacher told him they had to be red and the leaves green.

the school system did shift to allow us to paint all different colours but now we are very much back in a rigid mindset of how things need to be done - Primary has changed even since my oldest was there (year 12)

there is no slack - you either confirm or you are punished some can’t cope and get isolations and others simply can’t go.

As I said previously attendance rules don’t help either and the fact that lateness of any sort won’t be tolerated

Yes you are. It was all called truancy in the past, regardless of the reasons for it. Parents these days are not given the excuse they didn’t know their kids were not in school, or it’s their kid’s fault, or it’s nothing to do with them, so they have to say something - namely, that their child is not in school because they can’t force them in.

I've worked in a trauma hospital and I've been in an extremely violent, abusive relationship. Yet the most stressful and distressing time of my life was secondary school.

I was a 'school refuser' in the late 1970s due to my mental health - I walked out after lunch one day and refused to go back. My mother was not a nice woman, but she let me stay off because she couldn't beat me into submission. No truant officer for me, because I was a high-flyer, top of the year in every exam sort of pupil. Everyone assumed I was ill. For weeks.

Except my French teacher. He came to the house to see what was up, and basically said I wouldn't be able to refuse school forever. Also there was a trip to Germany coming up, and if I was refusing school, I couldn't go.

I went back for the last week of term so I could go to Germany. That trip sort of turned things around - it increased my confidence a lot, and then the summer holidays gave me time to recover from the general school stress.

That was 4th year, and apart from a major rebellion (that didn't involve school refusal) in lower sixth, I managed school ok and got great exam results.

But still, I wouldn't go back. I'd do the abusive relationship again before I'd do school again.

I don't like the conflation early in this thread between emotion-based school refusal, and truancy.

Yes, in the past they were conflated in some cases, but they are not entirely interchangeable. There is a big theoretical difference, and in fact that are pretty much the opposite of each other.

Truancy by definition is the act of avoiding or staying away from school Without a good reason. It is students who can, but don't want to go to school.

Emotion based school refusers are generally students who in theory do want to go to school, but can't. In a perfect world, most of them actually do want to be able to go to school like a "normal" kid, but due to a variety of emotional, mental health, social, neurological etc. reasons they can't manage it. If you asked most of them if they could click their fingers and change the situation so that they could attend school normally, they would say absolutely.

So you really shouldn't conflate the two. Yes in the past people did, which makes finding statistics about "school refusal" very hard, because historically it is conflated with truancy, and all manner of other absence in the statistical records. But they should never be treated as the same, and it should absolutely not be presumed that all of those who "truant" are refusers. A kid deciding to bunk off and miss a day of school because they don't want to go, is not the same as a child who wishes they could go but feels entirely unable to do so.

In a very short and over-simplified way:

Truancy =
Can go, but don't want to
Refusal =
Want to, but can't go

Im 52 we had school refusers in the 80,s but we called it wagging it or playing Truant
I first heard the term school refuser in the mid 90,s when I was training to be a mental health nurse.

They seem to have always been there. I don't understand that either.

I think you are basing your assertion entirely on your own personal experience and awareness at the time which you assume is comprehensive and accurate for all schools in all places.
I went to an average comprehensive school where students might not have been called ‘school refusers’ but they truanted and/or were ‘ill’ a lot and/or turned up and didn’t participate.
I didn’t personally experience or be aware of self harm amongst kids at school when I was young. Decades later I now know a family member at my school when I was there self harmed as did some of their friends.
There is less stigma to talking about these things and we now have more language to try and work out how a child might need support.
Parents are not being indulgent by letting their child to stay at home as a ‘school refuser’. They are usually trying desperately to access support their child is legally entitled to but for which resource is scant.
You need to look outside of yourself and your own experience of the world. Best wishes.

A search of statistics though shows that it would be very hard to prove whether there has been a rise in it or not.

Most of the research is post-pandemic, because there has been an obvious and notable rise in absences since then. But even then, the official data is purely numeric and doesn't denote why a student is absent, so gaining exact insight into how many are refusers, and how many have other things going on, isn't really possible.

Pre-pandemic data, and 20th century data is even more numeric and even worse..

So from the available data it would be correct to say that:

Overall trends in absences started to rise in the mid 2010s (gradually) but then massively accelerated during the pandemic, and has continued to increase and be elevated post-pandemic.

Access to data before 2006 is pretty awful, so drawing historical comparisons is mostly estimations and guesses. Anecdotally the story seems to be that attendance was gradually improved during the late 20th century, but then began to decrease in the mid 2010s as mentioned above.

The % of this issue that is due to refusal vs a host of other issues is not clear in the national data.

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My DS school refused. I tried to get him into school but, aside from the fact that was around 6 inches taller than me at the time so there was no way of physically forcing him, he was genuinely distressed. He often could barely get to the door, if I got him into the car and to school we would often have teachers and support staff come out and they would tell me in the end to take him home as he was in no condition to go in. I'm not sure that school would have been conducive to learning for a hyperventilating, sobbing wreck of a child.

The good news is that he has since gone to college, found a subject he loves and is on track for a distinction and university next year. He just needed a bit of time and the right environment. What wasn't helpful was people telling me I should just 'make him' go to school.

Your comments remind me of those people who tell people with depression that 'everyone feels a bit blue sometimes, just get on with it', that works to an extent but sometimes the mental health issues just make normal life impossible.

ETA: oh, and the threatening letters home from the school about school absences while we were trying to WORK WITH THEM (they were worse than useless) to get him back into school? Super unhelpful.

GotoGoto My DD was badly bullied,and this resulted in severe periods of illness .Pushing an ASD child(or any child ) into School against their will wont work .Also could seriously impair their MH. We HE and were all much happier! TBH I have never understood the "every child must go to School or they will miss out" line .There are stabbings ,bullying and so on .It's not like every child will go to Uni !

My sister was a school refuser in the 90s. In her case it’s because of undiagnosed autism.

just because you didn’t know of them before we had the internet in every home and people were able to talk about it online, doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.

This also, school doesn't suit every child. I hated it and found it completely overwhelming.

You say you aren't talking about truancy - but it's just another name for it.I was a 'truant' in the 80s but was in fact depressed, bullied hated school, had a terrible home life and couldn't face going in.It was only called truanting because my parents didn't know as attendance was not taken seriously.
My DD17 is a 'school refuser'.Long covid, PoTs, Heds .Was told she was anxious for 2 years but it was coeliac disease.Let down by the NHS so it's taken years to get help.She didn't refuse school...she wanted to be there but physically couldn't.If it had been the 80s she probably would have gone in for both registrations then bunked off and I would be none the wiser- doesn't change the fact she would be doing it because she is ill and depressed.I did the dragging in and it was damaging for all concerned.She now does online A levels .

It sounds like you were saying there's no reason not to force children into school even if you have to be abusive to get them there.

Until you have one i think its very hard to understand. Im not going to share my specifics but having a child who is so overwhelmed and distressed that they cannot go to school is really not something easy and dismissive.

Your poor daughter. Imagine going every day into an environment where, because you have major sensory sensitivity, the noise is constantly coming at you and is actively painful, you have to wear a scratchy uniform that makes all your nerve ends really uncomfortable, and you have to cope with crowds, bright lights etc that you find overwhelming. On top of that you have a speech processing problem so that you never quite understand what is going on, and a social communication problem so that you can't make friends, can't understand jokes and no-one wants to play with you. You struggle with transitions but have to make transitions throughout the day without preparation. On top of all that, you're constantly bullied because you're different.

And, far from helping you, your mother is pointlessly physically forcing you into enduring that every day. Poor child.

They absolutely did. I had one in my class. Our year head & her mum would have to take her from her house, to registration in the morning, teachers accompanied her to classes, only for her to jump out the window during a lesson & run away. She ended up coming back to reluctantly sit 2 exams, both of which she failed & we never seen her again.

My DS is going through all of this exact same thing. Everything you have said I can relate to it all 100%.

And yes other people’s comments are so unhelpful. They think taking the child’s devices off them is the magic answer.
One relative even said to me in the earlier days when ds stopped going to school, “Don’t give him any lunch. Turn all the electricity off. Make it as unpleasant and miserable as possible for him and he’ll soon be going back to school.” As you can imagine I ignored that absolutely ridiculous “advice”. My child was suffering and someone actually told me not to feed him.

Same. I tell them to go to school, they bloody well go to school. This is not a democracy, school is mandatory and I do not negotiate.