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

between parents who have been doing their utmost, and those parents who do not.

And no distinction is to be made. Well.
I am out of here.

There shouldn’t be a grey area with safeguarding though. It’s what it is for

We have the opposite problem, no school for the children to go to. The roof came off the school in storm after Christmas, so the children have been having on line classes since then, with the occasional day in the Church in the last two weeks. The DofE were asked for funding for a new building three years ago, but this was refused. This is a senior school. I suspect it will not be the last 50s/60s built school to fall apart. Time for Gov. to priotise its own shortcomings. Schools are aware which children need checking up on. A heavy handed approach is not necessary for genuine cases of sickness, where schools are fully aware of a situation.

I still think it is appalling and I would be tempted to slam the door in their faces. Stalinist. A phone call and meeting with the school so much better.The public just accepts things like that but they shouldn’t. It is wrong. Same applies to those stupid school inspectors who loom up from time to time. How dare they ? Teachers need to get together and strike against these unqualified people questioning their competence.

i don't know.
there are various ways of looking at it.
a sick child, genuinely sick, may be being abused or neglected.
if no official person has seen that child, how do they know.
i realise that there will be some situations that are higher risk than others, but i feel there is some logical gap in some of the reasoning put forward above.

I have other things on my mind, but this thread is not helping.

What this is, is injustice. I am tempted to say, and worse.

Safeguarding is about protecting the vulnerable.
But how is this child supposed to feel now?
My guess is he is now frightened.
He is a poorly young person. Which medical people are more than aware of.
How is being frightened[if he is], supposed to help him?
So much for his personal safeguarding and welfare.

welbeck

i don't know.
there are various ways of looking at it.
a sick child, genuinely sick, may be being abused or neglected.
if no official person has seen that child, how do they know.
i realise that there will be some situations that are higher risk than others, but i feel there is some logical gap in some of the reasoning put forward above.

The gap is funding I think, welbeck.

An EWO working in a school would be aware of the circumstances, which pupils are genuinely off sick and which need to be followed up with further action. They would know the pupils and be able to discuss the situation with the Head Teacher or Head of Year.

That is not within the remit of School Attendance Officers as I understand it.

Our Labour County Council intends to cut school budgets in the coming financial year, along with other essential services for vulnerable people. At the same time they will be putting up Council tax presumably to spend on what my teacher/school governor friend used to call vanity projects.

But how is this child supposed to feel now?

It depends how his parents handle it together with the school.

Once trust is lost, it is difficult and takes a long while to restore the school-parent partnership.

Schools are responding to the DfE demands - their current advertising campaign is sickening. My child had 94.7% attendance (equalled two days off sick) and so couldn’t be entered into the draw to win an attendance prize as it wasn’t the required 95%. I contacted school a few weeks ago as I fear EBSA will rear its head - and I’ve not even had an acknowledgment, despite the fact that that really would put their attendance figures in a poor light.

If money and resources are infinite, then for a school to have a policy that for example, any child absent more than 5 days in a term will get a visit from someone from the school, then that is fine, the policy is clear and no one will be bothered

But money and resources are limited and I just think that in those circumstance, it is best to concentrate them on the families. where absence from school is known to be associated with difficult family problems and where children are known to be falling behind in their work.

A school attendance officer's job, is to get children back to school, not check whether a child is being abused in any way, so there is no guaraantee that if they did visit a child not attending school they would pick up any abuse taking place unless it was blindingly obvious - a child covered in bruises, for example.