EBSA School Difficulties, school refusal - ELSA Support

This EBSA workbook School difficulties has been created with valuable help from the members of the ELSA Support Facebook Group who provided some of the difficulties their pupils face. It relies on real life situations that pupils have found difficult about coming to school. ELSAs are often on the front line trying to help pupils back into school and to work on their difficulties.

The booklet is aimed from Year 3 to Year 6 but could also be used with Year 2 with support.

We also have EBSA workbook school thoughts and feelings and EBSA Workbook Coping with school worries on the website.

EBSA is Emotionally based school avoidance. Pupils who struggle to come to school or are non attenders. This might have an emotional cause or a mental health cause.

The activity consists of a sorting board, cards with suggestions, cards for pupils to write their own, an exploration board, a feelings board with scales and changes and what they want to happen to make things feel ok.

This activity will help pupils to identify what is bothering them at school and how to reduce that feeling by changing the situation.

Start by printing out the base board and cutting up the cards. Print out a blank sheet so the pupil can add their own if they want to. Help the pupil sort the cards between things that are ok, things they are unsure of and things that are not ok.

Once you have done that choose one of the things that are not ok and look at it further.

Help the pupil break it down to see if you can find out what the actual issue is.

Example might be ‘seating plan’ that is not ok.

What is it about the seating plan that is not ok? Is it that they are sitting next to someone they don’t like? Perhaps they can’t hear the teacher? Perhaps they are uncomfortable and there might be a draft or a bright light bothering them. They might prefer to be sitting with a friend. Perhaps someone copies off them or talks to them and they don’t like that. Try and help the pupil to break down the difficulty.

Once they have the root cause of their difficulty, help them to identify how it makes them feel. Can they put a name to that feeling? How big is that feeling?

There is a sheet for pupil voice to say what changes need to happen for them to be ok. They can write it or you can write it for them and they can tell you what needs to change. There is also a daily sheet for pupils to write down anything that they think of or that crops up for them.

There are also some additional supporting resources included in the pack

This is the first workbook in the EBSA Workbook Range.