A “refusal” to allow school leaders the freedom to make exceptions to absence rules for “good reason” is creating a longer-term attendance problem by damaging trust with families, a heads’ union has warned MPs.
Guidance says that headteachers should only grant leave of absence in “exceptional circumstances”, adding that: “As headteachers should only grant leaves of absence in exceptional circumstances, it is unlikely a leave of absence will be granted for the purposes of a family holiday.”
Parents who take their children out of school during term time without authorisation can be fined.
In a submission to the cross-party Commons Education Select Committee’s inquiry into persistent absence, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) warned that there had been “little recognition” of the fact that many families “needed to rebuild their lives in other ways, such as visiting overseas relatives they had not been able to see, after the pandemic”.
“The refusal to flex, to allow school and college leaders the agency to make exceptions to attendance rules for good reason, is, in our view, creating a longer-term attendance problem,” the submission adds.
‘No flex’ in school attendance rules
Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at the ASCL, told Tes that the union had heard from leaders that they felt they lacked “the agency to make exceptional decisions and that this is damaging trust with families and ultimately harming their relationships with schools in some cases”.
Expanding on the topic of trust between parents and schools, the ASCL added in its submission that members had said the “changing advice” to parents from government about how to handle illness in children over the past three years had “led to a confused and sometimes acrimonious situation”.
“Parents have had to shift from obeying strict instructions not to send children into school if they have any sign of illness, to what now feels like an expectation that children must be in school regardless of illness. There needs to be a scaffolded response that can regain the trust and the respect of parents,” the ASCL said.
The union said it “would like to see a framework or code of practice for attendance that sets out good principles for all agencies and families to utilise”.
Mental health challenges and Covid vulnerability
Submissions to the inquiry have also highlighted reasons why children with mental health challenges and those who are clinically vulnerable to Covid-19 may be missing school sessions, and suggested possible solutions to this.
The submission from the NEU teaching union stated that school remains a “high risk” for those with vulnerability to Covid-19, and it is a risk that many young people “do not see as worth taking”.
“Until the government invests in HEPA [high-efficiency particulate absorbing] filters in schools and properly advises schools on health and safety issues around Covid-19, disabled young people, for whom catching Covid-19 could be life-threatening, are effectively being excluded from the school system,” it added
The NEU believes that the biggest reason for absence is the social, emotional and/or mental health challenge for the child and/or family arising from unmet, unrecognised or undiagnosed SEND need.
“Many children remain on the growing waiting lists for specialist assessment and support and are unable to attend school during this period,” it said.
Members of the ASCL reported that they were continuing to witness “increased anxiety post-pandemic”, especially in children and young people who already had an anxiety disorder.
“This is having a significant ongoing impact on attendance,” the union added.
‘Punitive’ system criticised
Several submissions to the committee criticised the “punitive” approach to school attendance.
The ASCL said that the “punitive” response to non-attendance its members were “being asked to endorse” does not work.
“They say it is easier to implement punitive, inflexible expectations on to families but this pushes the problem into more complex territory; it compounds the issues these families are facing,” it added.
Similarly, a submission from parents’ group Parentkind said: “There are concerns that a single standardised approach, as suggested when it comes to fixed penalty notice thresholds, could cause problems for vulnerable groups.
“While a simple system, where thresholds are clear and can be published, is welcome, our data should be cause for concern that a single system may not allow the requisite flexibility required in some settings. What’s more, this is a continuation of a punitive system of fines that parents, when polled in 2022, did not support.”
Polling by Parentkind last year showed there was strong opposition to parents being fined for unauthorised absence, with 73 per cent of parents disagreeing with the action.
DfE ‘should factor in inclusivity’
The submission from the NEU warned that schools needed updated advice on when absence should be authorised.
It said that the current system, “which treats all children and young people in the same way regarding school attendance, and takes no regard of SEND, mental health, deprivation factors and other specific issues, is damaging young people”.
The submission added: “Our concern would be that where schools are more inclusive, persistent absence could be higher for medical, SEND and other reasons. These students may be at greater risk from Covid-19 and other illnesses due to weakened immunity and therefore likely to have additional, genuine time out of school for reasons of physical or mental ill-health, which other students would not.”
“The factor of inclusivity within a school culture, therefore, needs to be considered by the DfE and Ofsted when making judgements about attendance,” the NEU said.
And the NAHT school leaders’ union added that school leaders are often left with difficult and “complex decisions”, such as authorising leave of absence in term time for pupils with SEND.
“Requests for a leave of absence involve a range of reasons being cited by families. For pupils with SEND, this may mean that some understandable reasons for absence may be difficult to authorise under current guidance,” it said.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The vast majority of children are in school and learning but we are offering targeted help for children who are regularly absent.
“This includes working with schools, trusts, governing bodies, and local authorities to identify pupils who are at risk of becoming, or who are persistently absent and working together to support that child to return to regular and consistent education.”
