Students walking out of lessons.

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My DS (12) walked out of his 2nd lesson this year yesterday. What do you do when a child walks out of lessons or doesn’t turn up. How do you react? Does it depend on circumstances and what is usually punishment in your school?

This is very much a "depends on the circumstances".

Does he have additional needs? Is he struggling with secondary? Did something happen?

Some schools will be stricter than others especially with coronavirus bubbles. It depends where he went once he'd walked out.

No additional needs diagnosed. I think he may have ptsd from a string of traumatic incidents however, that isn’t diagnosed yet. He told me he felt like rubbish and people were making him feel angry. He’s year 8

Are school aware of the issues?

Tricky one to judge without all of the facts.

Usually we'd be sympathetic as long as he was somewhere easily findable or actively looking for a head of year or equivalent. We'd come down hard on a student that disappeared because that's a huge safeguarding issue.

We'd flag him for more support and try to find out what's going on. Probably issue a lesson time out pass so he can leave the room at any time. Possibly agree a safe place in school he could go if it all got too much.

Where did he go? I’d probably assume he’d urgently needed the toilet tbh and would be aiming for a quiet talk about it later on.

In the school I work in, we would initially let the pastoral team know purely for safeguarding reasons. They can then find the child and make sure they are ok.

What is done after would very much depend on the circumstances. Usually though, there is a reason why children do this and that needs to be addressed. In your son's case, I would be nothing but sympathetic and try to come up with a solution so that he could safely manage his feelings.

How aware are the school of the potential PTSD?

In our school, it is expected that at the first sign of concerns, parents would make contact with either form tutor, head of year or maybe even safeguarding.

Once the school has spoken to parents, students can be issued with a time out card which they can use - it might direct them to their HOY, welfare office but generally a safe space they can go when something in the class has triggered a strong response.

If the school are not aware, then they would make enquiries, but it makes the process of getting help longer and more difficult and I suspect there are teachers who would be less understanding and therefore harsher with sanctions if they were not appraised of the situation. That's not to say a student would never be sanctioned, but that a more compassionate view might be taken first.

Last year this happened a few times aswell. He usually just walks around school, he never purposefully hides or anything like that. School are aware of the traumatic experiences but not that I suspect ptsd

What are school doing?

It doesn't sound great for him to be out of lessons a lot. He's obviously going to miss out on whatever is being learnt.

Are you in the process of getting him diagnosed? If so I'd definitely mention it to them. That's the sort of information they need.