School attendance is a topic frequently in the news. As a parent of children who have been, and one still is, in the state education system and faced barriers to attendance, I can see why the focus on attendance is convenient for those in charge and working in it currently:
- It focuses attention and lays blame firmly in the court of the child and parent.
- It attempts to hide the huge gaping holes in the sinking state education ship.
It fails to acknowledge that most of the non-attendance will be due to:
- Families taking children on holiday in term time.
- Long-term persistent absence by a small percentage of children – this may be no attendance at all for a substantial period, or irregular attendance. Many of these children can’t attend school – not won’t. Many of these children will have both identified and unidentified Special Educational Needs (SEN).
What’s the answer then? I’ll make sure to take each issue in turn.
Term-time holidays
Until a solution is found to the huge cost increases of holidays during term time, this will continue to be an issue regardless of the penalties threatened.
Families need to be able to go on holiday, it’s a huge benefit:
- Educationally in terms of seeing different places and getting different experiences of people, activities and environments.
- In terms of individual and collective mental health of families – families need to spend time together, sometimes, especially if parents work long hours, this may only be possible during family holidays.
Holiday options for families, especially those who may have significant and complex additional needs, low incomes, or often both, can be significantly restricted.
Non or low attendance due to unmet needs and barriers in education
A shift in attitude is required to understand many cases of persistent absence, will be children who can’t, not won’t, go to school.
Those in charge need to seek to understand and address the issues which are meaning this small, yet significant, group of children cannot access state education. From my experience there are three broad categories of needs which are frequently not met. Some children may face barriers across all three.
- Physical barriers to attendance e.g. not accessible to those with physical disabilities or sensory needs which means the physical school environment is harmful to them or restricts their learning when there.
- Other, hidden/unseen, barriers to attendance – again there can be sensory reasons, unaddressed bullying, overly restrictive school rules, overly demanding testing regime which cause huge barriers to pressure sensitive and demand avoidant children.
- Common mental and physical illnesses creating barriers to attendance – I do not mean neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism, ADHD, or dyslexia here, though mental and physical illnesses often co-occur with those. Illnesses are often present but may be regarded as low-level need, or sometimes that they are being fabricated by children/parents.
There is a prevalent view that children should be able to attend school regardless of these barriers. However, forcing children into an environment in which they don’t feel safe, without considering the validity of their experiences, teaches children that their instincts, feelings and experiences are ‘wrong’ or ‘over-reactions’. Those children will eventually start to ignore the signals from their bodies alerting them to danger and discomfort – this makes many neurodivergent children vulnerable to abuse later in life. In many cases, it will leave a traumatic imprint that may stay with them for a long time but may not be visible to the naked eye.
Many of the barriers faced by these children and their parents and carers are systemic level issues. Individual staff and schools can have different skills, knowledge and approaches that can certainly improve a child’s school experience and may enable a child to attend more, but many of the issues faced are not within the control of any one member of staff, or any individual school.
Policies and guidance are passed down from the Department of Education, from each individual Local Authority, and if the school is part of a Trust, then often from the Multi-Academy Trust leadership. Schools and individual children and families can therefore face multiple barriers that are hard to overcome. Where responsibility lies for removing barriers and providing suitable provision and any additional support requirements can also be blurred and makes the system difficult to navigate for parents and carers.
What are some of the current system-level failures that are impacting attendance?
- Lack of appropriate neuro-difference affirming training for teachers, in neurodivergent conditions and traits, including how to support children and young people with strategies.
- Lack of neuro-difference affirming training for all non-teaching staff working in schools. Lunch staff in particular need training, seeing as these are frequently the problem times for neurodivergent children who can otherwise cope in a formal structured classroom environment.
- Points 1 and 2 mean that children are both not identified as potentially neurodivergent, and even if they are, the support provided is inadequate.
- Long delays in neurodevelopmental assessments mean that children are not being added to the waiting lists in good time and not being seen in good time. A waiting list of over a year for a child of any age is a significant proportion of their life. For some children, current waiting lists are beyond the time they will be children!
- Long delays in EHC need assessment processes. Although this process is supposed to be dependent on and assessed based on need not diagnosis – that’s not how in works in practice, at least not anymore and not for decades possibly. This means that point 4 has a doubly negative impact as it both delays the identification of different conditions impacting children and access to support is delayed.
- Once the big hurdles of points 4 and 5 have been cleared, limited support is available anyway. For autism there is generally none, bar a depressing report to read and a list of websites or leaflets. For ADHD there is medication – feel free to join another long waiting list, and for medication to not be reliably available. Coaching is well recognised for ADHD adults as being beneficial, offering strategies to help overcome challenges in addition to, or instead of, medication, but this does not seem to be available for children so readily.
- Specialist schools had been phased out and the school buildings and land were often sold to keep struggling local authorities afloat financially. This means there isn’t the space to build or renovate to create new specialist provision, not to mention no funds. But there aren’t the staff trained yet to staff them either.
Supporting neurodivergent children in mainstream schools can be as simple as:
- Changing where they are seated in the classroom – near a window or door may be preferable, or near the front or back of the room.
- Providing fidgets or other tools such as wobble cushions and chair bands to both aid their concentration and ensure they are not unintentionally disrupting others learning.
- Providing sensory rooms, or breakout areas, for children for whom the classroom or hall environment is too overwhelming.
- Ear defenders or noise reduction earbuds to improve concentration and reduce noise distress in the classroom and lunch hall.
- Encouraging and facilitating connections with safe people in the playground, so children know who to go to if they’re overwhelmed or need a sensory break.
- Making sure all staff who encounter the child are aware of their basic needs.
- Removing arbitrary rules and unnecessary restrictions – this would benefit all children and may mean a return to school being a place to enjoy going to learn, rather than a place to be endured as it seems to be at present for many children who do attend regularly.
Conclusion
As parent carers of children with attendance difficulties, it often feels like we are alone and isolated; with little understanding or compassion demonstrated by those meant to be supporting us and providing our children with an education.
We aren’t of course, I know because I am connected in various ways and through different means with many other parent carers in the same boat. That’s both comforting and incredibly sad. Things need to change urgently because the system has gone beyond breaking point. We can only push children, young people, and their parents so far before this becomes unsustainable.
Written by Joanne Feaster (Parent Representative for Leeds Parent Carer Forum)
