Topic: One in five children regularly miss school

[Shankly998]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66701748

More than one in five children in England are frequently missing school, data shows, in a sign attendance is still struggling to get back to pre-pandemic levels.

The children's commissioner said some children play truant while others experience anxiety or have educational needs so find it easier at home.

Parents should get children back to school, urged Dame Rachel de Souza.

Before the pandemic, just over one in 10 students were persistently absent.

Pupils count as persistently absent if they miss 10% or more of their school days, which is roughly one or more days every fortnight over the school year.

Over the last academic year, Department for Education (DfE) figures show 22.3% of pupils in England were persistently absent.

What a harbinger of disaster for the country what can be done to reverse this trend?

[TepidT2O]

It’s a very very hard problems to solve…

The last 10-15 years we’ve made huge strides with stopping persistent absenteeism.. but covid has knows it all backwards.  Staying at home has become the norm for some kids now

[Peabee]

Yeah, mental health problems have been exacerbated too by the isolation of lockdown. The govt had to lock down, of course,  but the provisions put in place afterwards were mostly just around financial and physical health.

[Dench57]

Weird, I don't miss it at all.

[hide5seek]

For lots  of kids school is pointless. Hard to learn when your belly is hungry.
Feck the Tory scum and their supporters.

[TepidT2O]

For lots  of kids school is pointless. Hard to learn when your belly is hungry.
Feck the Tory scum and their supporters.

It’s not primarily  that. Because if it were you’d get breakfast and lunch at school. And whilst there are mental health issues too, it’s mostly not that either…

It’s kids that don’t want to go and their parents either support them or are too weak to make them attend.  Covid tipped the balance back after a decade and a half of progress

[west_london_red]

Are they including sickness in the numbers?

What I’ve noticed with my kids (4 and 6 now) was how sick they have been for the last 18 months or so. I’m assuming it was down to covid and them not mixing with other kids and picking up the germs they usually would have done before they started school, but my son especially didn’t go more the 2 weeks of nursery without him then missing 2-3 days at least because he had some kind of cold or runny nose or something else going on for all of 2022 and the first half of 2023, it’s only been the last 2 months or so that he’s actually been well for more then a couple of weeks.

The other thing is holidays, for the last two years we’ve pulled them out of school for a couple of days before the May/June half term just because it’s a lot cheaper then flying out when the holiday actually start.

[Peabee]

It’s not primarily  that. Because if it were you’d get breakfast and lunch at school. And whilst there are mental health issues too, it’s mostly not that either…

It’s kids that don’t want to go and their parents either support them or are too weak to make them attend.  Covid tipped the balance back after a decade and a half of progress

And now it turns out some schools are made of dangerous concrete and still have an abundance of asbestos. I did read some research earlier this year regarding a high number of teachers dying from asbestos after retirement. The asbestos caused no problems until it started to decay in recent years/decades.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/concrete-schools-asbestos-closures-problems-raac-wnd5953zw

[lobsterboy]

Kids and parents literally can't afford school.
Hard to learn and concentrate when your hungry and your parents are desperate.
Not to mention the stigma of being a teenager with no money, tattered clothes and no phone in todays awful society.
No wonder they bunk off.
What a horrible country we have become.

[redbyrdz]

I don't believe it is down to the parents being too poor. If it was, schools could do something about it. For example a school could relax uniform rules if the parents say they can't afford the right colour shoes or whatever.

I think money does come into it, in the way that schools can't offer as much support as they might need to. Teachers are spread thin and don't have much time to look after individual kids. After-school clubs get less and less, because the staff time isn't there.





But I also wonder if the "having enough if experts" idiocy has a knock-on effect to people thinking education is pointless, or even something bad to be avoided.

[lobsterboy]

I don't believe it is down to the parents being too poor. If it was, schools could do something about it. For example a school could relax uniform rules if the parents say they can't afford the right colour shoes or whatever.

I think money does come into it, in the way that schools can't offer as much support as they might need to. Teachers are spread thin and don't have much time to look after individual kids. After-school clubs get less and less, because the staff time isn't there.





But I also wonder if the "having enough if experts" idiocy has a knock-on effect to people thinking education is pointless, or even something bad to be avoided.

My kids school is changing the uniform requirements for precisely that reason.

[west_london_red]

Kids and parents literally can't afford school.
Hard to learn and concentrate when your hungry and your parents are desperate.
Not to mention the stigma of being a teenager with no money, tattered clothes and no phone in todays awful society.
No wonder they bunk off.
What a horrible country we have become.

Not sure I completely agree. There was concern during the pandemic that kids staying at home because of lockdowns would go hungry because they would miss out on free school meals, breakfast clubs etc

When I was at school one thing that definitely happened was that certain kids (mostly the poor white kids in a school that was 90% Asian) were unofficially allowed to quit school, if the kids stopped attending the school agreed not to ask too many questions as these were the kids who were going to fail their exams and bring down the school’s averages.

[Barneylfc∗]

I don't believe it is down to the parents being too poor. If it was, schools could do something about it. For example a school could relax uniform rules if the parents say they can't afford the right colour shoes or whatever.

I think money does come into it, in the way that schools can't offer as much support as they might need to. Teachers are spread thin and don't have much time to look after individual kids. After-school clubs get less and less, because the staff time isn't there.

The price of a uniform is disgusting here. Over £400 to include the regular uniform, a games kit and a PE kit for my lad's school, and that's before spending a penny on bags or coats or shoes.

[rob1966]

Lockdown really had an effect on my youngest, all he wants to do and has done most of the summer, is sit in his bedroom. We took them for long walks during lockdown, well longer than the 1 hour limit, we'd walk 5 or 6 miles in the meadows, but the rest of the time he stayed in his room. He's got a huge circle of friends, they play online all the time, but he just does not want to go out. He's asked today can he give up school, can you fuck, you're only just coming up to 13. He wants to be home schooled, not a chance I could do that.

[mickeydocs]

Lockdown really had an effect on my youngest, all he wants to do and has done most of the summer, is sit in his bedroom. We took them for long walks during lockdown, well longer than the 1 hour limit, we'd walk 5 or 6 miles in the meadows, but the rest of the time he stayed in his room. He's got a huge circle of friends, they play online all the time, but he just does not want to go out. He's asked today can he give up school, can you fuck, you're only just coming up to 13. He wants to be home schooled, not a chance I could do that.

I home school my teenage daughter. She loves it, excellent at most subjects, with affordable student tutoring providing help for maths and physics. She has a great social life.
She is home schooled as she hated the toxicity of secondary school. I have a younger daughter that will be home schooled once she completes primary school.

[rob1966]

I home school my teenage daughter. She loves it, excellent at most subjects, with affordable student tutoring providing help for maths and physics. She has a great social life.
She is home schooled as she hated the toxicity of secondary school. I have a younger daughter that will be home schooled once she completes primary school.

That's brilliant that mate - I sadly don't have the patience to deal with what would be a massive issue with him. He actually likes school once he is there, he just seems to want to stay a hermit and we don't want that. If he was having serious issues with the other kids at school, then I'd quite happily pull him out, I know from my own experiences how lads at school can be absolute c*nts, but I know the lazy get wouldn't do any work if we did, I could have killed him during lockdown as he just refused to do the work, the amount of screaming and crying from him was ridiculous, it was affecting me too as I wfh and wasn't getting any work done.

[reddebs]

One of my clients has 5 kids, all of them are on the autistic spectrum but with quite different needs. 

Her daughter, aged 12 also suffers with various types of anxiety and hasn't really attended any school since being excluded after a meltdown a few years ago.  They basically refused to have her back as they couldn't deal with her and there was no provision elsewhere.

Her new high school last September refused to allow her to wear leggings for her uniform and hasn't attended since. 

They eventually sent someone to discuss her options in July and offered accompanied study but again she had a meltdown once she got to the school so they finally accepted it's not for her.

She feels the 4 at high school have been badly let down by the system and are pretty much on the scrapheap and feels all she's done is fight to get the support they need to eventually become functioning adults.

It's like everything else in the country, take money away from the support which results in more support being needed.  It's such a backwards and expensive way of doing things 🤷

[west_london_red]

One of my clients has 5 kids, all of them are on the autistic spectrum but with quite different needs. 

Her daughter, aged 12 also suffers with various types of anxiety and hasn't really attended any school since being excluded after a meltdown a few years ago.  They basically refused to have her back as they couldn't deal with her and there was no provision elsewhere.

Her new high school last September refused to allow her to wear leggings for her uniform and hasn't attended since. 

They eventually sent someone to discuss her options in July and offered accompanied study but again she had a meltdown once she got to the school so they finally accepted it's not for her.

She feels the 4 at high school have been badly let down by the system and are pretty much on the scrapheap and feels all she's done is fight to get the support they need to eventually become functioning adults.

It's like everything else in the country, take money away from the support which results in more support being needed.  It's such a backwards and expensive way of doing things 🤷

Getting them into the right schools is absolutely key. My brother in laws son is autistic and they were in complete denial for ages even though it was clear by the time he was about a year old that he wasn’t quite right (apologies as thats probably not the right way to phrase it), then when he developed an American accent it was pretty obvious he was autistic, but once they accepted there was an issue and got him diagnosed and into the right school when he was about 6 or 7 he came on massively.

Unfortunately as he’s about to begin secondary school the council have decided he’s no longer eligible for transport to and from school so will have to make a 90 minutes journey each way by bus to the special school, and I don’t know how he’s going to do that without someone (probably my elderly mother in law) having to accompany him each way.

[reddebs]

Getting them into the right schools is absolutely key. My brother in laws son is autistic and they were in complete denial for ages even though it was clear by the time he was about a year old that he wasn’t quite right (apologies as thats probably not the right way to phrase it), then when he developed an American accent it was pretty obvious he was autistic, but once they accepted there was an issue and got him diagnosed and into the right school when he was about 6 or 7 he came on massively.

Unfortunately as he’s about to begin secondary school the council have decided he’s no longer eligible for transport to and from school so will have to make a 90 minutes journey each way by bus to the special school, and I don’t know how he’s going to do that without someone (probably my elderly mother in law) having to accompany him each way.

That's the thing though.  They've all been assessed and diagnosed and all but one of the triplets are in "appropriate" schools yet they still don't get the help or support for their specific needs.

Two of them have been referred to the educational mental health counsellor's  but she was told "they're too far gone for us to help" 🤷

Her youngest hopefully will get some help now he's at primary as preschool didn't even want him attending as they didn't offer one to one support.

The 4 at highschool go to 4 different schools across the borough yet none offer what they need.

[west_london_red]

“Too far gone… “ there kids FFS 

[reddebs]

“Too far gone… “ there kids FFS 

Exactly mate!

[Wullie160975]

Lockdown really had an effect on my youngest, all he wants to do and has done most of the summer, is sit in his bedroom. We took them for long walks during lockdown, well longer than the 1 hour limit, we'd walk 5 or 6 miles in the meadows, but the rest of the time he stayed in his room. He's got a huge circle of friends, they play online all the time, but he just does not want to go out. He's asked today can he give up school, can you fuck, you're only just coming up to 13. He wants to be home schooled, not a chance I could do that.

An exact mirror of my son who's coming up to 14 next month.

He asked yesterday 'why do I have to go to school, can I bin it off'? This morning he was up and doing his hair an hour before he needed to leave, so as long as he's 'mentally ready' he'll be fine and happy once he's there.

[lobsterboy]

"72% of school staff said pupils affected by hygiene poverty were experiencing low self-esteem. 53% said these pupils were isolated or “left out” by others in class & 50% said they had seen a negative impact on mental health"

Guardian today.

But no, its the lockdowns...

[filopastry]

Anecdotally my wife works with someone whose daughter basically refused to go back to school post COVID as well, not poverty related, she's basically afraid of going to school, currently on the waiting list for mental health support, and may be waiting a while unfortunately.

[thejbs]

When I was in P6 I had a stomach problem that caused me to miss a month of school. Going back once better was the most traumatic experience for reasons I still can’t figure out.

[Peabee]

When I was in P6 I had a stomach problem that caused me to miss a month of school. Going back once better was the most traumatic experience for reasons I still can’t figure out.

Yeah I missed a month due to panic attacks, I was already one of the youngest in the year, and returning was traumatic, and I’m still dealing with the trauma.