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?

@Vaguelyclassical at the time no, my biggest pathological fear was being made to be in school.

I avoided until I turned 16, at which time I was no longer required to attend school, and I got a job in a shop. At 17 I enrolled in night school at the local college and got GCSEs in Maths and English Language, the year after I did Biology and French. I went on to do a science foundation course, and then uni degree in my early twenties.

Long winded and more expensive that it needed to be, but it was completely right for me. I was never lazy, or stupid- just different. For what it's worth, since my mid twenties I have been fortunate to have very stable, and I would say positive mental health.

I’m in my mid 40s and was one. My classmates were told I had glandular fever; in fact, I was so horrendously anxious and unhappy in school that I just didn’t go for several months. We exist.

Covid. Knowing their perceived rights. Son being 6ft2 at 15 and 14 stone. How was I supposed to get him to school that he hated? Really really hated?
He’s a senior manager in banking now so…

Totally agree OP - easier to let them stay home with their phone and games.
There’ll be even more non workers and we’ll bail them all out with benefits that I and my hardworking family pay our taxes for.
Then these non workers will have to find other ways to get money - truly scary.

School ‘refusing’ children have been around for a long time. I wrote my masters thesis on this topic in 2009. However at that time I could only find 5 young people (who met my criteria) over a cluster of 5 schools I was working with.

the numbers have massively increased. You could easily find 5 in every school. Most of the kids I see now with EBSA are either diagnosed or undiagnosed (yet) neurodivergent. The others have had very traumatic lives. Very rarely do I see a kid who just can’t be arsed or parents and schools who don’t try their best to get them into school.

I did fine academically and have a successful career BTW. It was just a horrible school and some of the girls in my class were fucking bitches.

For my son, school 'refusal' started aged 9. It was anxiety caused by his father's suicide. It eventually developed into a personality disorder with psychosis plus an ADHD diagnosis in his late teens. I'm not surprised he couldn't get into school some days- that's too much for a child to bear.

Huh?
I never said schools were perfect in the past. They weren't.
But it's been 150 years of trying and experimenting and constantly changing things and it's still crap.

Thanks for starting this thread.

Now I have some great advice of taking bedcovers, turning off the WiFi, and let's not forget simply not allowing it.

I never thought of any of these things before so it's been super helpful. I'm sure dd won't scream for 3 hours solid tomorrow morning now I have these tools to navigate this bloody horrendous situation ❤️

The answer is all of the above.
Worsening mental health in children.

Increasingly restrictive curriculum place more stress on the children who simply don't learn that way leaving them.to simply become burnt out and unable to cope
Couple that with less staff and schools being held to higher academic standards means the kids who might go off and just do craft or learn at a slower pace now isn't always possible so those children who might have coped in a low demand primary now don't have that option so don't cope and can't go in.

Bigger noises classes unhelpful for those who find it stressful.

School/ government more forceful with parents about attendance means we talk about the refusers more. Incidentally Can't not Won't is true of many children who struggle to go to school (not all but many).

They have always existed but society wasn't as focused on them and no social media meant parents didn't connect to discuss.

When I was at school on 80s/ 90s I can think of several children with v low attendance.

I’m 30 and probably went a combined total of less than 5 years of school. Tbh I don’t think it had a massive impact on my life. I still ended up university educated to postgraduate level. DC is only currently going because he’s small enough to physically pick him up and take him in. I assume next year it will be much more difficult.

I'm amazed by this thread...from age 4 - 18 I attended five different schools...I do not recall a single school refuser.
No one ...
We all went to school...and if you didn't turn up or signed in and then weren't in class our parents were called.
We were all in a state of relative awe/ fear/ respect of authority and just wouldn't dream of not going in.
I do recall being 15 and a couple of girls went into town after registration...the school thought they were missing and called the police.
They were returned to school by a couple of cross looking police men...no one else ever tried that again.

Caveat...I was in private sector education

I was one, in the early 1970's. My parents didn't know though, I was good at writing illness slips and coming up with excuses to Mum as to why I wasn't at lessons.
I was desperately unhappy at school and almost afraid to be around my peers. I wasn't bullied but hated the crowded rooms and noise.
All my spinning plates came tumbling down with a home visit from the truancy officer: by then I was almost able to legally leave school.
I've heard the term school phobia mentioned over the years, is this happening now,?

My first teaching job was 26 years ago and School Refuser (in those words) was already an absence code on the attendance register. We had an inset day about supporting students with early signs of school phobia in 2002 or 2003. It has definitely existed. I taught in a school where there was a high rate of trauma, years before Covid, and there was definitely a link between trauma and school refusal. The PRU we referred to was full with years of waiting list, hence the initiative to try to keep kids in mainstream school with better success of them actually being there. We had many members of staff picking students up and dropping them off. That was largely more successful than putting them in taxis on the school’s bill. I was hit breaking up fights more times than I care to admit but one of the two scariest days at that school was when a school refuser kicked the window of a black cab so hard that it did that weird safety glass shatter. If I hadn’t known she was alone in the backseat, I would have been sure she was fighting off an attacker. There was nobody there.

A lot of school refusing comes from trauma. This generation has more trauma at their age than the last few. Schools continue to be under resourced for ordinary things, much less a significant amount of trauma-affected students. It is safer to know where children are and develop plans for school refusers than to have them walking out the gates and disappearing for the whole day on the regular.

The vast majority of these kids are not pulling a Ferris Bueller.

My brother refused to go for two years in the nineties (12-14 y old). He said the lightning hurt his eyes. My mum asked for help everywhere. Finally he had a retired teacher come over every day for a couple of hours. He wasn't hanging with "the wrong crowd" and he wanted to learn. Nobody could explain what was wrong with him until a psychologist talked about Aspbergers and sensory issues. He was telling the truth- the lightning hurt his eyes so much that he got a headache. Once they believed him he got seated where they put up a cardboard so he would get less light. He's a Gp today with wife and kids.

I know a few people whose kids are refusers - they are not pushovers and their kids and generally quite high achievers, but usually neurodiverse. One idea I've heard, and I think there's something in this, is that COVID showed kids who have never fit well with school a world without them having to go to it and actually not wanting to go back is a fairly reasonable response. I'm very aware from friends' experience that you can't 'just drag them in and tell them they have to stay'

It will be interesting to see how these kids fare in future though.

Fear based parenting was a thing, even as recent as 15/20 years ago, lots of ‘I wouldn’t DARE do XYZ when I was their age’… because of fear.

Most parenting now is done through engagement and communication. But when that breaks down and you can’t threaten a child to go to school… you get school refusers.

I was at school with a school refuser in the 90s and 00s. He just stopped attending and then in order to get him to attend, the school allowed him to work outside of the classroom.

He was intelligent so did well in spite of limited attendance, although I think he may have also had some home education.

I can’t say what it’s like today as I don’t have kids but they did exist years ago.

You've no idea what you are talking about, basically

Well both my parents stopped going to school at about aged 12. They just dropped out of education and noone cared or followed up.

When nearly 200,000 children are regularly school refusing I’d say that’s a sign of things not going terribly well in schools.

Same. So i stopped doing that and made sure that DS knew home, and me, were safe.

Id like to see the ‘not on my watch” deal with a 6 foot 15 year old crying like a baby begging me not to make him go, jumping out of the car and hiding in a freezing park for hours rather than go to school. And this is a non SEN bright boy with lots of friends. There was nothing we didn’t try to get him to school to the point I almost had a breakdown.

We spoke to the school on an almost daily basis but there was very little support there. This was in Covid times so no idea if things have improved

My cousin was one in the late 80s/early 90s. It began in primary school when he was repeatedly told he was just naughty, lazy, not trying etc. It wasn't until much later he was diagnosed with dyslexia but by then the damage was done. He missed lots of high school. It's wasn't for lack of trying, my aunt and uncle were tearing their hair out over it.

You know what they say: there's none so knowledgeable as the ignorant.