21% of pupils are persistently absent! National average is double post COVID

[FusionChefGeoff]

Just read this on the BBC

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1ddegp8zvo

It's a stark statistic that nearly a quarter of kids are basically not getting an education. A quarter of our society is being failed before they even reached adulthood.

The article does explore various different reasons that contribute or explain the massive number but I'm shocked at how high it is and what a massive challenge it is to sort it out. I'm definitely going to be listening hard to the politicians take on this issue or is everyone who matters just ignoring it?

I'd break it down into the following categories and I think points 2 and 3 demonstrate why this is such a major problem as they are a 'dammned if you do, damned if you don't' combination.

• genuine, extreme medical mental health issues which you'd imagine should normally be quite a small number but has been drastically increased by the collapse in our CAHMS service
• school induced medical health issues due to draconian rules / behaviours management systems
• school induced mental health issues due to the lack of the above and disruptive behaviour / breakdown of trust / general chaos
• home induced mental health issues due to family situation eg mental health issues in parents / bereavements / other trauma
• inherited lack of belief / value in education so parents don't care, kids don't care, don't bother going to school basically neglectful parents
• manipulative kids using 'mental health' as a way to get out of doing something they don't want to do combined with permissive / poor parenting which allows this behaviour

The biggest thing we have to tackle is why there's such a huge increase in ADHD and autism diagnoses (assuming you can access any kind of assessment of course)....

is it just that we talk more about it?

Is it early access / excessive use of devices that wires our kids all wrong to cope with the world?
Is it a rise in well intentioned but misunderstood 'gentle parenting' ie people doing it wrong and ending up with very permissive / neglectful parenting that again, wires their brains all wrong and removes all resilience?

We can't just keep looking at throwing money and resources the very acute symptoms ie the school refusers without putting the same effort into understanding and FIXING the problems.

I just can't accept a world where a quarter of kids are at such an enormous disadvantage in life before they even leave school it's too sad.

they won't miss 20% of private school because parents will make sure they attend, because they are paying for it

maybe we just need to make sure parents value education

The push for attendance means a lot of children go in even when they are clearly contagious. .. which means my children (asthmatic) catch more bugs and miss more school...

Children don’t miss 20% of time at private school.

In my experience absence other than for illness is virtually nil.

School attendance has dropped in the USA. About 26% of kids are persistently absent now compared to 15% pre covid. NYT article on it here with lots of details. The increase is across ethnic groups and income levels.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/29/us/chronic-absences.html

My DD has terrible attendance. Her father and I value education - we are both teachers - but our DD can't cope. She has autism and severe social anxiety. Both are now diagnosed but she was struggling before the diagnosis and school did little to help until she was formally diagnosed. If more had been put in place sooner, she might have managed better. She also has a lot of absence due to physical illness, recurrent tonsillitis etc. Anecdotally, I know a lot of kids with autism who have a lot of other health complications.

I think ND kids need smaller schools with greater flexibility. Secondary schools are so rigid these days over uniform, equipment etc (ND children often struggle with executive function). They often rule with a culture of fear over the smallest mistake which is not a conducive environment for most children, let alone those with perfectionist tendencies which is very common in autism.

It frustrates me that the narrative about school attendance is so focused on term time holidays and disengaged families. Most children who struggle to attend school don't go because their needs are not met there.

Why?
Health issues reduction in antibiotic prescriotions. My kids longer illnesses have been bacterial and some have left longer term isshes
Delayed catching eg CP

holidays
Rubbish uk weather
Expensive uk and abroad holidays
Parents feeling kids missed out on theme parks etc etc so taking kids out
But then finding theme parks rammed at all time including inset days etc

Even secondary my dd class had several kids missing on last day of term (jun).

Actions
Improve schooling so parents believe every day IS important
Swabs for bacterial infections
No movies on last days/weeks of term
Make lesson work available online as some kids will miss work and struggle to catch up
Having textbooks
Allow some kids to drop back a year, there are secondary kids who cant read.

How many of the absent kids have sen?
Such delays in assessments of 2-3years.

I get that some kids have genuine issues that are exacerbated or caused even by the way schools are run
but on this thread we have had people talking about 'a weeks holiday with GPs' or just not feeling like it....that isn't valuing education
who will employ the kid who thinks they can just not bother to turn up?

Covid made it clear that school is certainly one way to learn - but it is inefficient and time consuming. We got through the ‘school work’ in fewer than 2 hours on any given day. That mean we could create our own curriculum which was far more interesting and child-led. DD thrived - sadly I didn’t as I also have a full time job.

I know family members who have disappeared for 6 months for travel and their kids are still top of the class.

People know now that missing days isn’t going to derail everything, and they might actually find that something else is better to do. That genie isn’t going back in its bottle.

There is a thread in HE about university attendance which is dire too.

I really don't get the argument from parents that because attendance wasn't seen as important during COVID it's not important now. DS was Y10 when pandemic started, so missed the vital years for GCSE. We made sure he was there for online lessons (although to be fair he pretty much regulated himself in respect of that and never missed one) and obviously wanted him to keep up that work ethic when in Sixth Form and now university.

If he had been younger we would have wanted to make sure he was catching up on anything he had missed not letting him miss more.

Parental attitude is a huge issue in our schools.

I’m convinced an awful lot of ‘anxiety’ is ‘screen withdrawal syndrome’. Hence ‘I feel so anxious at school but fine when I’m home with unlimited access to screens’.

I think we need to start funding and building specialist schools for these mentally challenged children rather than throw them into mainstream school where they obviously don't cope.

It feels like they’re looking for any excuse not to bother.

I don’t really like harking back to WW2 as a rule but I’m staggered that after that everyone went back to school and work as usual without bleating about societal contracts etc yet about 6 months at home and we’re all ‘highly anxious and unable to do anything’ years later

I don’t think there’s any point, I think v few of them will have a productive life. There’s going to be an awful lot of benefit claimants in 5/10 years and anyone with half a brain will leave the country to avoid the tax burden

I have two kids at secondary school and lot of this resonates with me.
I agree with the "draconian" rules thing. It seems to me as if kids at secondary school have to put up with a sort of worst of both worlds, where authority figures will crack down harshly on all sorts of minor mistakes or misunderstandings, but at the same time amongst peers there is a constant threat of teasing, bullying, low level violence or extreme humiliation seems to be common place, the toilets are basically the wild west.

I hated secondary school for this sort of thing but it seems to me, in memory at least, that you could actually avoid trouble, at least from teachers if not from peers, by just trying to. I was not a model pupil by any means but I didn't want hassle so I showed up, did my homework, tried broadly to be in the right place at the right time, and I never - NEVER - got a detention. This seems to be an impossible aspiration now and my kids are completely desensitised to punishment.

Can you clarify this? I work in a school and have school aged children and I don't remember this as a message at all.

I also have an autistic child who did go through a period of anxiety attendance issues due to Covid, but I worked with their school to get them back into full time education.

Firstly there is the Covid narrative. We told the population that they shouldn't send their child to school unless both parents were key workers. Some children did not attend school for nearly 2 years. You can't say children can't go to school for so long and then expect full attendance. Either school is compulsory or it isn't.

COVID reset the experience for some children, especially those who are ND. With such a long break from education, some children unwound from the stress of school. The change in behavior for some ND children who were not in school due to Covid was shocking, some reverted back to their carefree preschool selves. It then becomes very stark the "damage" schools can do to some children. Any parent who saw their ND child unwind for the first time in years started exploring alternatives. Unfortunately to access many alternatives you need an EHCP. How many adults stop in damaging workplaces? most adults will seek to change jobs if they can. Children don't have this choice, they are expected to attend school.

Even children who are NT unwound during Covid. Then going back to the 5 days a week in school during term time was hard and a shock. We only have to look at how many adults are fighting going back to the office 5 days a week, wanting hybrid and WFH. We say the office is stressful, it's noisy, it's busy, it adds extra time to our day, we can't go to the loo when we like/ eat when we like. Ditto kids in school. In some cases the loos in school are locked and there is no lunchtime.

I believe a big factor in school refusal is the current set up in schools. Class sizes are too big (most classrooms are much more comfortable space wise with only 24 in them). The noise level from 20ish students to 30/32 is much higher. Everything feels busy in a cramped classroom. Big schools are loud, busy and cramped. Schools are using every inch of space all the time. Then there are the rules and zero tolerance policies. Toilets are locked, break and lunch times are very short so there is no real unwinding time. Staff are stressed and close to burn out. Staffing challenges mean workload is high and teaching inconsistent. Useless SLTs. Behavior is atrocious in some schools. Funding for SEN is in the gutter and LA will do absolutely everything they can to avoid having to stump up any extra money.

There also really needs to be some investment into alternative provisions and SS places. There are a lot of children who are not at schools that meet their needs. This then often leads to violent meltdowns due to overwhelm, or severe school anxiety or both. We need to move away from inclusion in mainstream is the only answer for all children. Even with the most generous ECHP in the world some children just cannot cope with the mainstream school environment (either academically or socially). They need proper provision that meets their needs with a peer group. Not othered in a corridor with a TA, or othered into a "sen base", sent an afternoon a week to the "nurture group", or made into the class pet where everyone takes a turn to be "Timmy's friend" for the day.

I would say a lot of the kids I work with who hate school, complain about the boring and narrow curriculum and over testing. There seems to be no joy in discovering new learning or getting good at something, just always racing to move on to the next thing, not covering anything properly, the marking is always ‘could be better IF’ and continual assessments.

‘‘Twas ever thus

Two relates issues going on at the moment.

Why do so many children hate going to school?
and
Why do so many teachers hate working in schools?

All this and the desperate problems with recruitment and retention in teaching. Children and adolescents need somewhere to belong - it's hard for school to provide that if they have different teachers week to week.

It's not the fault of individual schools.

My dc had excellent attendance all through school then caught Covid three times and now has long Covid and picks up every bug going.

My kids attendance is 85%. Health issues. Kid has meets age related expectations or above age related expectations gradings. Days off for health reasons we still learn.

Really? I don’t feel that I was tested constantly when I was at school, especially not at primary. I don’t feel that the stuff we were learning was manically fast paced either-we covered things properly and thoroughly, and then moved on.

It was when I was there (2000s)

I’m older than you-it really wasn’t like that for me.