Persistent absenteeism in schools has become an area of increasing concern in education (Nearly a third of UK secondary pupils avoid school due to anxiety, survey finds, 2 February). The response to that absenteeism is still focused on children and young people changing their attitudes and behaviour in order to fit in better into the educational system, with cognitive behaviour therapy suggested as one solution.
The education select committee found in 2023 that a major reason that large numbers of children had not returned to school after Covid were the barriers to attendance presented by poverty. Absenteeism, like exclusions, is a race and class issue. As Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner, said in her response to the persistent absence inquiry: “Children are not absent from school because they don’t want to learn. They are desperate to learn but everyday thousands of children find themselves without the support that they need to engage in education and attend school.”
Sadly, the harsh discipline, excessive rules, regimented daily timetable and teaching to the test in predominantly working-class schools have been a further deterrent. The result, as the article points out, is increasing numbers of children and young people “experiencing extreme anxiety or distress relating to attending school”. It is the educational system that needs to change. Schools should be more welcoming and supportive, especially for those predominantly working-class and ethnically diverse young people who lack the resources to make educational success more than a remote possibility.
Prof Diane Reay
University of Cambridge
• Therapists flocking around distressed school students no doubt mean well. Yet they often treat symptoms, not causes, and position problems within young individuals instead of within adult-run systems, and so increase the problems.
If so many young people avoid school due to anxiety, like canaries in coalmines they warn that many schools damage mental health – by punishing failure to learn, and enforcing petty rules and detentions, isolation rooms and exclusions. Ofsted bullies teachers, who frequently feel forced to bully students, who, unsurprisingly, often bully peers, in a pyramid of fear and coercive control.
This echoes the Post Office’s transfer of blame on to individual post office operators, with expensive use of controlling professionals (inspectors, police, lawyers, etc). Here, pupils are blamed and the costly professionals supporting the system include social workers, doctors, therapists and police. The Children’s Manifesto that the Guardian published in 2011, and many good schools, show how the most important work can be achieved: to prevent distress and work with children and young people to promote ways to enjoy living and learning together.
Prof Priscilla Alderson
Institute of Education, UCL
• The charity stem4’s latest survey found that poor mental health is the major driver of absenteeism. In all the discussions of possible contributory factors, I’ve seen no mention of the role of today’s unprecedented levels of authoritarianism in UK schools.
Strict enforcement of uniform, punishments for infringements of draconian rules and the liberal use of isolation and exclusion have created a harsh culture in many schools. If the rigid and narrow curriculum – with reduced opportunities for creativity – plus endless testing is added to students’ experiences, it is hardly surprising that they are anxious. Such a culture is anti-educational and anti-learning.
Dr Lorna Chessum
Former principal lecturer in education, Brighton
