Why is EBSA more common nowadays?

[HotLikePapaJohns]

Why is EBSA more common nowadays?

I have read on other threads that it's always been an issue but I don't remember it as a child. Yes, there was some truancy in secondary but not in primary.

Is it that kids are more able to express their feelings? Or that school has become harder? What can be done about it?

The pressure at school is awful and I've a child in year 5. It's unbelievable what they learning. I feel for the teachers. It's literally so fast blink or be I'll one day and you are behind

Okay I will bite.

My daughter struggled with EBSA for four years. I am not the parent who takes children out of school for holidays, in fact before Covid my dd had 100% attendance for a few years in a row.

Schools are much more rigid now. Detentions given for forgetting a pen etc.

Schools are also really busy. As a lot of small schools have closed down.

My dd went to a newly built school which was all one building. Break times and moving between lessons was too noisy and chaotic.

Covid taught children they didn’t need to go to school. Although ironically my daughter was really excited to go back to school after Covid.

Most of the children with EBSA are autistic. I have practically dragged my daughter to school but that didn’t work.

When my DS was in Year 1 and my DH wanted to take him out of school for a holiday, I stayed at home with DS. DH went away with DD (who wasn’t at school then). So definitely not giving the impression that term time holidays were ok.

The only thing that solved it for my DD was moving to a really small school with low demands. She can actually attend school now and is enjoying learning. She enjoys being at school and hanging out with her friends more than she did being at home.

Controversial, but I think children are less resilient

It was always happening. Attendance has been tightened up so schools now follow this stuff up.

I think it's because parents are, rightly or wrongly, more concerned about their children's mental health. When I was a child in the 90s and teen in the 00s I think most parents had a very rigid view of keep them in school at all costs.

Said this before but I swear that they all knew someone who knew someone whose child dropped out and didn't do GCSEs and from then on their life was a doom spiral of woe.

I also don't think that inclusion works for every case. Maybe some of the children with disabilities would have been more able to attend schools that met their needs better.

I was also bullied and went in every day. That’s my way of coping, its still my way of coping. My DD’s way of coping was to avoid school.

I honestly tried to force her. But now take the opposite approach, leave her to it. Now she goes in without my input.

See i honestly don't think behaviour is worse. My observation is that actually schools have really clamped down on some stuff eg bullying of hard working /clever kids, they seem to have a much better time now than they did in my day. Certainly my kids are having a miles better time in secondary school than I did!

I don’t recognise this utopia of primary (or secondary) schools from years ago that people talk about either. My primary school in the 80s was very much focused on a lot of sitting at desks. Yes there was some toys but we could only play with them at certain times. The day was very structured. Definitely no wandering in and out the classroom to play outside at any point. Only dedicated break times. Zero play equipment outside. Just a concrete playground. I remember my teachers really shouting at us if anyone was misbehaving. And they would keep the entire class in at break time as punishment for things. All my primary school classes were around 31/32 pupils. And just one teacher. Very occasionally a teaching assistant but it was rare.

Secondary school in the 90s we had to wear a strict uniform. Even socks could only be black or grey. Girls weren’t allowed to wear trousers until I was in year 10. Even hair bands had to be neutral or school colours and any long hair needed to be tied back at all times. Some teachers had rulers they would measure your heels with and if too high you got detention and given spare plimsoles to wear and then a letter home. You got detention or litter duty (picking litter from the playground at break time) for forgetting your fountain pen (and you were only allowed to write in a fountain pen. Not a biro or any other type of pen), any other equipment or text books you needed, your hymn book, your PE kit and so on. There were absolutely zero adjustments for anyone “different”. I was diagnosed autistic as an adult. I would have benefited hugely from some adjustments. But they just weren’t a thing. I did not see a teaching assistant at any point in secondary school. No one (in my classes anyway) had a 1 to 1. Only in languages we had a native language speaker occasionally to help.

Yet on here everyone says schools were so much more relaxed years ago and that’s why ND people don’t cope now because it’s so much worse. But is it? Schools give more adjustments than ever before but apparently they are so much worse.

About the pressure in mainstream school- huge busy environment, lots of testing, rigid timetable, uniform etc which can be really challenging for sensory issues… a family member works in a school very different to this, very small classes (just a group of children rather than a full class) no strict uniform, testing is kept to a bare minimum lots of adaptations to avoid the rigidity of mainstream school (this is a private one.) There is just as much of a problem with children not attending. So maybe it’s more a PDA type issue…. However much the adaptations are made, some children’s behaviour is to try to control their environment, the decision making etc.

I think part of the problem now is that if a school has a strict uniform policy the parents push back against it instead of just getting in line. My local school has recently become a lot more strict. All you see is parents whining on Facebook about it. If you got off Facebook and got your kid the right shoes they might not get suspended!

I completely agree. School in the 90's was much more rigid in many ways! And yes classes were so crowded, in my secondary school some classes had as many as 37 kids crammed in the room.
Uniform was strict, lessons were boring etc and clubs etc were rubbish. As others say, no adjustments whatsoever for autism etc and yes there were some children with autism in my school but far far fewer than have diagnoses now.
The flip side was that far more personality types were accepted, rather than thinking there was something wrong with kids who were a bit different and they needed a diagnosis of something, they were just seen as quirky or different and that was OK.
We need to go back to embracing more diversity instead of thinking there such a thing as a 'typical' person and diagnosing every kid that doesn't fit that mould.

You’re so right. School really was mind numbingly dull. Remember those sentence makers? Folders you could stand individual words in on cards. How dull?!? The most exciting child centred things I remember was the teacher reading us a story and sports day

There is a great deal of shocking parenting going on.

It’s not the whole story but from my teaching experience (running a unit for young people with Emotional and behavioural issues) it’s a massive great whacking proportion of it.

Back in the day it was issues generally with families in poverty. This is still there to an extent but has been overtaken by (generally) middle
class parents scared by their children or scared themselves resulting in anxious children or unboundaried children who call the shots.

It’s a mess.

The issue is not the children, it’s the parents. Parents don’t want to hear that though. They will all say how desperately they try but they can’t make them blah blah. But that’s after the horse has already bolted. It’s not the parenting at that point. It’s all the parenting, or lack of, beforehand….the failure to build resilience, coping mechanisms, work ethic, to teach basic skills, develop emotional intelligence, teach that sometimes you have to do what you don’t want to do, the importance of learning and education, discipline, personal accountability…..and the attitude of some parents towards schools, teachers, education etc alongside the extreme child centred approaches we see nowadays that teach kids they are the most important thing in the world and nothing and nobody else should ever get in their way.

How old are you OP?

In the Blair period, there was an increased focus on school attendance. If you're 30ish you might only remember the fruits of that and then after. I would say though that culturally, the mid 00s to 2019 was an unusual period.

i’m autistic and have ADHD.

if I had been allowed to opt out of school and spend all day with horses I would have.

I certainly wouldn’t have the career, degrees and enjoyment from the career I have now if I were allowed to stay at home not to mention the income level.

smart phones streaming and gaming would have been way more reactive to my dopamine deprived brain than any day at school where I struggled socially but learnt to mask effectively. I was badly bullied for a time. Had my lunch money stolen daily and went hungry anmong other things. Begged not to go to school at this point crying daily. My Mum came down on the school like a ton of bricks when I eventually told her and the school put a top to it.

Despite the hardships I would have a very different looking life if I had been able to choose if I attended school or not. I found it hard but avoidance would mean I never learnt to deal with difficult environments, manage my own emotions and learn self discipline to work hard and get on. I’d have been loafing about at home achieving nothing which looking back would not have helped me at all in later life.

It’s a fact of life we all have to do things we don’t enjoy as employees, business owners, parents etc across all walks of life. The world would be a mess if we only did what we enjoyed and nothing we found uninteresting, hard to challenging.

I was at school in the 90s. No SATS and I remember so much more music, arts, craft projects that took almost all day for weeks! This was before literacy and numeracy hour etc.

Can you now? And where are you getting these stats from?

I'm so glad we have a voice of reason. If only parents would parent, hey?

I do kind of think there’s an element of it spreading. I don’t mean that it’s not genuine, just that when children realise it’s an option then it becomes difficult to argue against that.

I absolutely hated going to school and I did skip quite a lot in years 10/11 because it was an option while lower down the school it just wasn’t.

I've been teaching the same amount of time as you. I agree about class sizes but not the rest.
Are you still teaching? Do you still go in schools?

I am an advisory teacher and I go in lots of primary and secondary schools. Primary schools are not more fun and play based on the whole now. Generally that stops at the end of reception because the KS1 curriculum is so jam packed. I have had children telling me year 1 is hard because they don't play any more and all they do is learning. When asked what learning means they said sitting at your table listening and doing work.
Secondary schools I think I don't have time to write much about those!
Plus COVID. This really didn't help when kids spent a good chunk of two years having time off, online classes etc. it made people realise they don't HAVE to be in school full time.

My autistic daughter was out of school (EBSA) for 18 months. It started in year 5 and then full absence in year 6. Schools now are much stricter on uniform even for primary. She has sensory issues. Whatever the law says schools are not making adjustments to this. Pressure for things like SATs is huge. Her teacher just couldn’t stop the pressure (no blame, she was under pressure to get the results). There were no TA that could have assisted my dd. The classroom was packed (larger class sizes) and the curriculum less flexible to allow for adaptations.

She now attends a specialist provision, every day. Absence only for physical illness and she is thriving. No uniform, max of 15 in a class. She is exceeding her age related expectations now. It’s not the children, it’s the education system.

Time to wheel this one out again:

Thinking about it, I avoided high school, but I did it by truancy. My niece didn’t go to school after year 7 either, but people are more on it now. She’s autistic, and to be perfectly honest, I suspect I am too, in a less severe sense.

I would register, then leave school and walk on the beach, in all weathers, just to avoid being there, and to be in nature. My niece rarely leaves her bedroom (she’s 19 now).

I wonder, if there were smaller groups which learnt mostly outdoors, and avoided technology, whether some children could stay in education longer. I supported a child in KS1, again with autism and adhd, who I mostly taught outdoors. He thrived in that setting, but found the classroom overwhelming. He also found Forest School a struggle when the whole class were there, but we spent a lot of time in the forest by ourselves (it was adjacent to the playground).

I recognise that this wouldn’t solve all school avoidance, but I’d like to bet that it would help at least 50% of children who struggle currently.

Tech is too easy an escape, I think, and some children (and adults) become reliant on it to the point where it’s really unhealthy.

Well yes, if only they would. Another aspect is children’s dental procedures. My brother had to have teeth removed due to trauma and it was a case of coming in, mum cuddles him while he’s put to sleep with a mask and that’s that. Now, they’re identified as anxious, have multiple appointments, a FREE prescription to take at home, more meds to be given in hospital and then put to sleep. If only parents actually parented their children.