Government cracking down on school non-attenders. What happens in practice.

I hate the full attendance award as well, it's discriminating. I also worked with a horror who had full attendance for 20 years at work no sickness on her record. She was selfish and come in with streaming colds and coughs and passed it round the office. I found this selfish.

M0nica

Callistemon21 Read the post I wrote that is just above yours. As I have said several times, parent and school had been working together for at least 2 terms on DGS's problems and they had been given all the relevant medical information including the consultants letter's.

Yes, I understood that M0nica

However, I wondered if the relevant information had not gone through to the School Attendance Officers who do not, presumably, work at the school nowadays but probably at County Hall.
The only information they may have is the attendance records of pupils in the County which they have to investigate.

A breakdown in communication.

School Attendance officials should use their intelligence, both in their heads and in their files to target those families that are known to be struggling or where they have good reason to believe there are problems, not the families they see and talk to frequently and have a fully dossier of medical reports.

They may not have all that information even if the school does. Would you want his medical records shared by the school without permission? They will have a record of attendance which they need to follow up on.

Instead of looking at this as censure, perhaps be grateful that they wanted to see the child to check on his welfare.
You know he comes from a loving, caring family but they did not.

fancythat

Does the school itself, employ the School Attendance officials?
If I was the parents, I would be straight around to the school, to work out where things have gone amiss. As well as contacting School Governors.

No.
They are employed by County Hall and probably do not work in any particular school.

Perhaps the whole system needs to change.

If those two turned up at my door I would refuse to engage, and they would have been told to clear off

rafichagran

And that would have rung warning bells very loudly that the parent was trying to hide something.

Callistemon21

^If those two turned up at my door I would refuse to engage, and they would have been told to clear off^

rafichagran

And that would have rung warning bells very loudly that the parent was trying to hide something.

And why should people doing their job be treated in that way.

I think some posters would be surprised that "nice" families condone unnecessary absence too.

As I wrote before, what should have happened is that the officers should have ensured that the child is getting all available medical support and also offered some kind of support to ensure that the child isn't losing out on education. If the child has online access, resources could be suggested and/or in extreme cases, home tutors are available.

Sending them away with a flea in their ear would be a guaranteed way to set warning bells ringing.

I suspect one of the problems could be that experience education welfare officers were made redundant when resources were transferred from education authorities to school. Rising absence statistics have caused panic, so a new cohort of welfare officers has been recruited, who don't have the years of experience the old ones did and are possibly working from a script.

Sadly there are parents who don't send their children to school and their % attendance is very low. We have an attendance line which we expect parents to leave a message explaining their child’s reason for absence. If no message is left I ring to ask why they are not in school, but this is a friendly check in call along the lines of can we help etc etc . The only families that are home visited are children that have been absent 2 days with no message or no response to my call, families we know may have a safeguarding worry or children with attendance below 80%. If a child has a long term illness I meet with parents in school with the involvement of the school nurse and an attendance plan is agreed, this may be attending on a part time basis for example. All parents with children who have attendance under 80% receive a series of attendance letters and meetings in school. Attendance is dreadful and there are children missing out.

My mother - a teenager in the 1940s - told me that the headmaster of their school used to go round pupils' houses on weekday evenings to check that the children were at home doing their homework. If they were seen out at a cinema or similar on a school night, this would be referred to in morning assembly the following day and the pupils concerned shamed! This would have been during the war so maybe this had something to do with it. But ....

I tried to do a little more research into numbers and came across this
A child missing from education (CME) has not been registered with any school, nor are they being educated from home.

It is estimated that more children are missing from education than ever before. In a 2020 report, the Local Government Association estimated the total number as 250,000 children.

More recent investigations by the Children’s Commissioner For England in 2022 found that there are no reliable figures for children who have slipped through the net and never go to school.
As local authorities don’t know what happened to these children, they’re unable to meet their duty to keep them safe

That's a shocking number. These are lost children, not in school, not home educated. These are the children who should be getting visits
www.systemc.com/knowledge-hub/blogs/absences-from-schools-in-the-uk-the-key-statistics-for-2023/

Growstuff I’m sure you’re correct about untrained inexperienced attendance officers. Education welfare officers used to be seconded to study for a CQSW, so many were well trained and qualified. The austerity project has so much to answer for

annsixty

If only all local authorities had this policy though I do agree this was totally heavy handed and unnecessary.
My local authority, Stockport, have no interest at all in attendance when told , blatantly lying, that children are being home schooled .
No checks whatsoever in 3 years.
I am picking up the pieces in this sad situation.

You can’t just tell the school you are homeschooling, it has to be done through the ELA.

*LEA

So agree with Skyviolet, the checks are very much needed for the benefit of those children that are suffering. You can't assume anything.

I would also have been upset by this, but, whenever I see a tragic story on tv about a child my thought is always "why didnt the school pick this up" . I guess they have to be thorough which seems tough on the decent parents .

how long since the child had been off sick ?

on this occasion, ie not seen in school ?

This is safeguarding. Unfortunately not all children in the same family are treated equally. I applaud any authority following this procedure. If something happens to a child from ‘a good family’ and no visits made there would be uproar and yet again ‘lessons will be learned’. I would be happy with this visit and grateful that checks are being made. You cannot choose which children to visit or not. The authority are following procedure not a tick box.

keepingquiet

What a mess- education radically needs a overhaul. It is not providing for the needs of children anymore and is all about numbers and making the academy groups look good. What a complete shambles and what problems we are storing up for the future.

Definitely!!! They forget that children are individuals, what is good for one is not necessary right for all. The idea that one type of education suits every child is ridiculous, high achievers are held back by less academic pupils. No real provision is made for children with manual skills or less academic traits. No wonder so many kids are playing up in class and getting excluded they are being pushed in a direction that holds no interest for them. As long as they learn basic literacy skills and maths why do they all have to end up with 10 GCSEs and A levels that they are never going to need or use, and if they don't achieve what's expected of them they are branded as failures.

I can well see why these parents were irate since the requirements of the school hadn't been explained properly. In general, however, part of this process is aimed at finding truants whose parents might not even be aware or abuse or neglect. Obviously, in these latter cases, forewarning would be counter-productive.

Quite so, Mauriherb. Who remembers the Victoria Climbie case… And this explains the questions re which the attendance officers have to ask each family. Going through lists and eliminating certain cases would take twice as long as a call to each address, and allow others to say they were being discriminated against.

Callistemon21

The only information they may have is the attendance records of pupils in the County which they have to investigate.

Do you know that for sure?

Now I see that you have written the word may.

welbeck

how long since the child had been off sick ?

Does that matter if there is constant liason with the school? [and op mentioned that they want a gp nots after 7 days].