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

You shouldn’t have been expected to home visit him. If he refused to come into an office interview. 2 police officers should have been with you ‘to prevent a breach of the peace’

We were expected to do some dangerous things and I suspect it’s worse now

Thanks Iam , it was a terrible experience. He was violent and awaiting trial for rape . My request for two of us to go was refused and if I didn’t like it ….! can’t believe I didn’t just refuse point blank. It took a terrible toll on me and my family.

Silverlining, sorry to read about the assault you were subjected to. It’s essential sw visit in pairs, especially to unknown or families known to be hostile.
The general public have little understanding of the extent of drug/alcohol dependence or the volatile behaviour sw face

Gloryanny On most days he can walk the one and half miles to school. On ordinary days he is fine, but other days he is just - fatigued.

We live 200 miles away so do not see how day to day living goes, but I think his parents do not want to ramp the illness up too much. Most of the time he will be fine and, like all boys his age is racing around, enjoys school, has lots of outside interests

He just needs understanding from the school when he has bad times and acceptance that he is prone to infection and most infections will be followed by a fatigue episode.

It is just at a time when school resources of all kinds are strteched, this seemed such a waste of resources, when it was a case where the school was well briefed and already knew all the circumstances around the child's absence and parents had stuck to all school protocols.

As an education welfare officer I was based in the local education office and was allocated ( too many) schools which I had to visit every week. I saw the head teacher at each school and was asked to visit children who were not attending school at all or those who were missing too much school.
After visiting the homes I had to report back to the various head teachers.
Have realised that astonishingly, this was 50 odd years ago….and is certainly irrelevant now.
Feeling very old

Sorry M0nica I didn't mean to imply that your GS would be able to attend school.And I wasn't very clear. Once the box was ticked that a visit had been made and the matter dealt with the relevant standard will have been met.
It's possibly a case of two lots of records and neither system informing the other. The school had the details, Possibly the attendance staff saw them (maybe not) but they would see his past attendance and know his ability. So they would realise there was a good possibility the matter would be easily resolved.
I do hope your GS is OK. There used to be teachers who visited children who were ill and helped them, liasing with the school and bringing work to them.
I also wonder would he be entitled to claim he needs transport to get him to school?
So many things have been cut I don't know what remains.

Fancy that yes!

Not schools fault once again but unless it is vomiting or a high temperature, we have to allow them in... Conjunctivitis, scarlet fever, impetigo, head lice, throat or chest infection, all sorts of very awful or very contagious illness allowed to school now unless it reaches a certain level and even then it has to be diagnosed to count

On the other side there are a lot more working families now who can't afford time off and yes too much sick time may now mean a home visit

It's a lot to juggle for everyone involved but too many children have been harmed by abuse

Advert for post of School Attendance Officer:

The post will be based at home or County Hall

This post is not within a school.
What I was told was that when pupils are absent, this will appear on the school report and trigger an alert to the School Attendance Officers.
It seems as if they attended without consulting the Head Teacher at your DGS's school to find out if they knew of any reasons for his non-attendance.

It sounds like a lack of communication within the school.

DGS suffers from bouts of extreme fatigue and or fainting. Sending him to school is a non-starter. He has to walk over a mile or take a bus, and he wouldn't manage it as far as the bus stop.

As I said the school has been in the loop for at least a year.

Playing devil's advocate here, how many times have children been injured or killed because no one checked on their welfare. This does seem heavy handed MOnica but on balance better to have too many checks than not enough.

I understand it is a shock but safeguarding means things need to be followed up. I had a social worker turn up at my home when my dd was in school because some suspicious bruising had been found. Of course I could explain where it was from and I was absolutely furious at the time but she has a severe disability and struggled at the time to communicate, of course the school did absolutely the right thing.

I've also had the school email me recently about my youngests attendance. I don;t even think it is that low but head of year said in follow letter - send him to school even if he is ill!

Personally, I would consider contacting the School Governors.
This is partly the reason for them.
There is a breakdown somewhere. Whether it is between Head and parents, Head and the Attendance Officers, or whatever they are called, or the school sickness policy, I dont know.

But whatever way, I think the School Governors should be made aware.
At the very least, their School Sickness Policy needs to be looked at[as far as I know they get reviewed every 5 years anyway].

It sounds as if someone looked at the attendance records, didn't check with the Head Teacher or Head of Year and decided a visit was necessary.

There needs to be better communications.

I hope he's feeling better now. Half-term is coming up soon, a chance to do something different. R and R.

eazybee

I would have thought that your family would be grateful that the school cared enough to check on the reasons for your grandson's absence.

eazibee they KNEW why he was absent, they had recent letters from a hospital consultant telling them what was wrong with him, and his family and school had been working together for several terms to deal with his until recently undiagnosed medical condition.

His illness had been manifest at school and discussions had been going on about how adjustments could be made to accomodate this. he loves school and is involved in lots of school activities,

His parents had also meticulously followed the sickness reporting protocols laid down by the school.

coolcoco the family had been in ongoing dialogue with the school for several terms about DGS and his healh problems, , so if there were any issues beyond illness these would have already been picked up.

If they still couldn't work it out they could have phoned the parents or asked them to come into school to see them. His sister had had an exemplore attendance record at the school and so had DGS until his medical condition developed.

Gloryanny thank you for your kind remarks, but since DGS absences are caused by illness. any intervention by the school is ulikely to have any effect of his attendance. When he is well, which is most of the time, he is at school. When he is ill, he isn't and no intervention by the school can change that.

These visitors would be much better concentrating on those families on the cusp where a little support and follow-up might easily get some children back in schools, so that they can then concentrate on the more difficult cases

DGS comes from a supportive family, all working in the education sector. He is going to do well no matter what happens. Staff should be concentrating on the marginal families where a little intervention now could possibly be positively life changing, if a child returns to school.

Jaxjacky

Applying the procedure with no common sense.

Yes this.

I would have thought that your family would be grateful that the school cared enough to check on the reasons for your grandson's absence.

It might in a way be a bit of a compliment M0nica if what my mother called a "back handed" one. Schools are very aware of which children they need in school and which can be overlooked a little. Your GS is a high achiever, he comes from a supportive family, a small intervention is likely to yield a good result. So one visit, matter sorted, box ticked. There are hundreds if not thousands of children out of school that pose an intractable problem. Not only is it difficult to get them back into school but once they are in they are constantly disruptive and often temporarily excluded. At top primary and at secondary level schools function better without those children. Making home visits is difficult and sometimes dangerous, parents are dysfunctional and sometimes violent, and exercise little control over their children. Your GS was an easy option.

CoolCoco

Maybe a tick box exercise as you say, but if a parent was calling a child in sick when the child had been abused or neglected and no visit was made they’d get rightly criticised. It can’t be “we know this child is from a good family so we won’t bother” isn’t really part of their brief. Presumably they were satisfied all was above board after their visit.

exactly this

It was! I could have died. Thanks Galaxy.

Cross post Silverlining. That must have been terrifying.

I am part of a service that does home visits, (not to do with this issue), on the first visit we would never go alone Grantanow.

Grantanow if police have always gone in pairs then it’s about time people expected to visit homes should too. Did you read my post.? Not cost effective for the public purse? Harsh.
It took years for me to recover from my assault.

This is another area which became lax and now is starting to be tightened up. Children are the future and it's important that they are properly educated.

Ah. But in the instances I have seen of Home Ed over the years, that doesnt often happen.
And parents who send their children to school, know this.

Two officials? Is that cost-effective use of public money?