Page 9 | AIBU to not understand how "school refusers" are a thing?

Chaibiscuits · 04/02/2026 20:21

PistachioTiramisu · 04/02/2026 19:35

I just would not allow it - kids have to learn that they are not the be all and end all - they bloody well do as they are told - and that includes going to school unless they are unwell. Some parents let them get away with so much - it is not right.

Assuming you can physically force a child of any size, would you do it they were screaming and begging and crying? Highly distressed? Frightened? Overwhelmed? Would you force them in if they couldn’t cope or were being bullied or really anxious? Would you keep forcing them in if they started self harming or stopped eating and talking?

Octavia64 · 04/02/2026 20:22

My dc was a school refuser.

she was in private school. Got a scholarship to sixth form as her GCSE’s were so good.

She got increasingly anxious and worried about school, for a while I was driving her in for only done lessons (part time timetable).

i stopped trying to persuade her to go in each day after one morning when I hassled her for a bit and then she got a knife and went for me with it and then tried to cut her own wrists.

there areLOTS of teens that would rather lay naked on the bathroom floor with no WiFi than go to school.

MonteStory · 04/02/2026 20:22

Idontunderstandmodernlife · 04/02/2026 19:22

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?

I love it ‘ these kids didn’t exist, I never saw them’…right, because they weren’t there! How do you see a kid at school who specifically doesn’t go to school?!

Suggesting it’s a new thing is utter nonsense when there used to be an actual adult human whose job was ‘truant officer’. The language we use has changed and the way attendance is monitored has also.

it used to be easier for kids to ‘go to school’ but actually nick off into town. It might be a few hours before someone was able to reach a parent to ask where the child is. Now with mobile phones they’re receiving a text at 8.50am
Schools/local authorities are much stricter on attendance so language such as ‘school refuser’ is used about children who might previously have been labelled ‘a bit fussy’ or ‘sickly child’
It did happen. But because it didn’t happen to you, your friends or your siblings it appears to you as though it didn’t happen. You, and indeed every adult you know, represent a tiny proportion of the population of the UK
The way the press report it make it seem like a new issue when it isn’t. School refusal, emotional based absense, truant, skiving, being a little bugger - it’s all the same thing but the language makes it seem new.

Mcdhotchoc · 04/02/2026 20:23

Op you really have little imagination.
None of my 3 were school refuses but I can absolutely see that past about 12 you cannot physically force anyone to do anything.
It's not always to do with parenting.

Original poster

Idontunderstandmodernlife · 04/02/2026 20:23

TheInkIsBlackThePageIsWhite · 04/02/2026 20:15

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 ❤️

I'm not responsible for how other people respond on my thread.

OP posts:

Ketzele · 04/02/2026 20:23

They did exist! They just truanted. I was at school in the 70s and remember many kids who just never turned up. Schools didn't have attendance targets and often turned a blind eye to kids working on their dad's stall, for example.

My dd is a school refuser, and in many ways I think life would have been easier for her back then. A more vocational education, plenty of jobs available at 16, fewer jobs demanding qualications etc.

I'm not denying a point I think you're making, which is I think about social contagion. There's no doubt that the more school refusers there are, the more it seems like an option for both children and parents. But even accepting that, I do tire of being shamed by other parents who have no idea what my child has been through.

mumofoneAloneandwell · 04/02/2026 20:23

I was bullied severely at school. I didn’t want to go and my attendance was poor. My mums mental health was bad and she couldn’t advocate for me

I now have my autism diagnosis. Had I recieved proper support and been pulled out of school, I wouldn’t have suffered to the severe extent that I did. I still feel the impact and I am 34

my dd is autistic and is very fortunate to have sen support. If she didn’t, I’d be homeschooling her 🥺

FakeItUntilIMakeIt · 04/02/2026 20:23

KimTheresPeopleThatAreDying · 04/02/2026 20:14

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.

I had a class mate who was off for the best part of a year and we were told she had glandular fever (maybe this was a similar situation) In the 90’s there was pretty much zero understanding of mental health or neurodivergence in teenagers.

MrsKateColumbo · 04/02/2026 20:23

In the 90s some primary kids at my school (who in retrospect had ASD) would often escape at lunch and the head had to go and find them on his bike.

After a few years they started locking the gates

Echobelly · 04/02/2026 20:25

HatFamster · 04/02/2026 20:18

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

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I think the relentless bloody testing is not helping. I couldn't believe how many separate exams my oldest DC had to take and the way that Y11 now has to be an entire year of ceaseless revision and mock exams. I'm not looking forward to it for DS next year, who has ADHD and while he's engaged and capable in class, finds exams and recalling lots of information really hard. I'm very glad he still seems to like school and want to go in but it could so easily have gone the other way.

Missstak · 04/02/2026 20:25

My son is year 7 at mainstream secondary school and has ADHD and ASD. He also has an EHCP. He has going from being supported brilliantly in Primary school to pretty much nothing. He has been masking for ages and was becoming increasingly paranoid. He has refused to go into school all week and was previously a child with good attendance. I keep requesting a a meeting with the SENDCO to try to formulate a plan to get him back in and have been met with silence...I want him in school and he wants to be in school, but his mental health won't let him go in. I am unable to pick him up and drag into class and I can't sit with him and make sure he doesn't try to leave or watch him become so dysregulated that he has a meltdown in front of his peers. School refusal is not a black and white situation, it is complex and heartbreaking for both parent and child.

the80sweregreat · 04/02/2026 20:25

Kids in ‘ my day’ played truant. I admit that I didn’t , but often they would disappear at lunch time and return the next day. The school were not that worried really ( or maybe they did ring parents and nobody would answer )

Tiswa · 04/02/2026 20:26

NeverSeenThatColourBlue · 04/02/2026 20:04

I find it hard to believe that many teens- anywhere near the number that now count as persistently absent- would choose to lie in their pyjamas shivering with no internet and no duvet for very many days. Especially if parents facilitating their social life and hobbies was dependent on them going to school.

However, that's my opinion and other people are free to do as they wish, but it wouldn't have flown and won't in future with either of mine.

I've seen too many children who have started off by missing school, then got worse and worse until they can't do anything. Especially once their friendship group moved on without them.

When I was a child my next door neighbour had anxiety. Sometimes he was so anxious he would be sick on the way to school and his Mum would take him home, get him a clean uniform and bring him back again. The school knew that some days it might take until 10 or 11am to get him in but he was always there. His friends were always there to help him get through the day. Eventually he got through it and now he's very successful, married, two lovely kids. By coincidence, he's in the same workplace as me. So that's how it was dealt with then. I can't speak for every family but that approach- that he was always going to school one way or another- worked for him.

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@NeverSeenThatColourBlue without knowing I think you have pointed out a real issue with today

attendance attendance attendance

if the school had been flexible and understanding about DS coming in at 10 or 11 would have had a much easier path because that is the thing going to school one way or another during the day doesn’t exist

one minute late and it is like the world has ended and that pressure is immense particularly if there are negative effects such as detentions for being late

FuzzyWolf · 04/02/2026 20:26

I can think of lots at my school (me included) who would skive off school. The paper registers meant it wasn’t picked up as long as we were at registration with our tutors. Our parents would have been very smugly unaware and not possibly believe it could be happening.

Meem321 · 04/02/2026 20:27

Research EBSA

mumofoneAloneandwell · 04/02/2026 20:27

Missstak · 04/02/2026 20:25

My son is year 7 at mainstream secondary school and has ADHD and ASD. He also has an EHCP. He has going from being supported brilliantly in Primary school to pretty much nothing. He has been masking for ages and was becoming increasingly paranoid. He has refused to go into school all week and was previously a child with good attendance. I keep requesting a a meeting with the SENDCO to try to formulate a plan to get him back in and have been met with silence...I want him in school and he wants to be in school, but his mental health won't let him go in. I am unable to pick him up and drag into class and I can't sit with him and make sure he doesn't try to leave or watch him become so dysregulated that he has a meltdown in front of his peers. School refusal is not a black and white situation, it is complex and heartbreaking for both parent and child.

Can you keep him home? For his own best well being, poor thing x

Flustration · 04/02/2026 20:27

Definitely was a thing!

Ex partner was a school refuser throughout primary and high school. This would have been 80s and 90s. His mum used to drive home crying because they were unable to get him out of her car and into the school.

There was a girl in my year at primary school who hardly ever turned up. With hindsight I think she had undiagnosed autism. Her mum used to arrange play dates with mine to try and make sure she had friends and get her to attend.

I'm sure there were many more, but those were the two that came immediately to mind.

Jaffalemons · 04/02/2026 20:27

They did exist. My mum’s cousin was a school refuser and he was sent to a children’s home! He was born in the late 40’s.

Midnights68 · 04/02/2026 20:28

I think it’s one of those things with multiple complex and interrelated causes.

I think cuts to SEN provision are part of it - children who might at one stage have attended a specialist setting are now shoved into mainstream and just can’t cope.

Covid, as many people have said.

Social media, smartphones, complex and vicious bullying via the above and consequent poor mental health.

Many schools feeling like very dangerous places - knives and drugs. Harvey Willgoose struggled with school attendance before his murder.

And a greater emphasis on school attendance by schools and LEAs.

Notashamed13 · 04/02/2026 20:28

Not rtft but I completely disagree.....we had shit loads of skivers back in my late 90s era.

Hankunamatata · 04/02/2026 20:28

HereBeFuckery · 04/02/2026 19:38

Okay, I’ll bite.
I believe, with only second hand experience of it, that there is a mixture of:
-students who are utterly overwhelmed and burned out by the modern school system of testing, rigid rules, constant changes in pedagogy, expectations which cannot have any flexibility to account for different abilities, preferences and levels of motivation;
-students who have horrendous behavioural issues for a wide variety of reasons, whose parents lack the skills, knowledge, time or motivation to address these and who allow students to skip school when the consequences ramp up (facing permanent exclusion);
-students who game the system and have seen peers have part time timetables, sport/forest school alternatives, picking where they sit, time out cards, etc. Honestly, I don’t entirely blame them;
-parents who cannot BEAR to see their child even slightly miffed and who interpret a normal teen strop over getting dressed as sufficient reason to keep them home. This is more often in cases where school refusal seems to be in fits and starts, not consistent. ‘I CAN’T get him/her to leave the house’ is often cited in my experience with students who actually CAN be persuaded to do things if they know you mean business, and sense you won’t cave;
-failure of the school environment to adapt to children who have neurological differences. I don’t just mean allowing ear defenders for noise, I mean understanding that for a student with autism who presents with a rigidity of understanding, seeing the randomness with which some sanctions are applied is deeply upsetting, or seeing that ‘you can’t exit lessons to sit on the bog and text’ is easily turned into ‘you may visit the toilet at will because your mummy says you are anxious about taking a poo’. Again, fairly understandable.

Not one reason, but a swathe.

Totally this.

Whole plethora if reasons

I will say there some mind boggling things iv seen senco dealing with in high school.

Currently watching one parent basically demanding a TA who has been assigned to a child for last two years, given to their child because the teen didnt like any of the 3 they were given so refused to go to school cos teen wants x child's TA.

Tootiredforthis23 · 04/02/2026 20:28

My DD has autism and was a school refuser at age 4. She would scream for an hour on school days, but because the school insisted she had to be there I would pick her up and carry her there. Then the school would call after an hour and say she was too upset (crying non-stop and stripping off her clothes) and could I collect her. So I would. I was already pregnant when this started so eventually I couldn’t drag her there and they threatened social services involvement for non-attendance. So then we withdrew, home schooled for a bit and then moved her to a new school that worked with her. She’s 8 now and settled but it took a lot of work.

The school system doesn’t, and has never, worked for every child. Years ago you would never have heard of a child like her and she would have been excluded, or moved to a special school despite her being academically able.

MonteStory · 04/02/2026 20:29

Idontunderstandmodernlife · 04/02/2026 19:29

I'm not really talking about truancy

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You are actually. And the fact you don’t understand that ‘bunking off’ is a form of school refusal, shows how little you actually understand this issue. So maybe, just maybe, concede that you are wrong and it is not a case of parents ‘allowing’ their kids to miss school.

Original poster

Idontunderstandmodernlife · 04/02/2026 20:29

CommonlyKnownAs · 04/02/2026 20:13

Exactly what time period are you talking about OP? Because initially it was 10-15 years ago, ie 2011 to 2016, and then you've jumped to corporal punishment on stages. The attitudes to attendance in the eras you're jumping between were quite different.

They are two quite different comments on two different things.

My OP was my general point of topic, referring to 10/15 years ago

My comment concerning corporal punishment was a reply to a commenter who said that she feels that school has been a 150 year old social experiment (her words, her bringing up 150 years, not me) and we are now at the "going horribly wrong" stage. I responded and asked if she truly believes that now is the going horribly wrong stage considering everything that's happened in the last 150 years.

OP posts:

TheBlueKoala · 04/02/2026 20:29

Idontunderstandmodernlife · 04/02/2026 20:23

I'm not responsible for how other people respond on my thread.

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The thread was judgmental to start with. For ND kids threats and being stern is quite ineffective (been there and tried that).