Harry Hocking was just 14 when he texted his mother to tell her he was in desperate trouble and needed help. On the way to school, he had become frozen with anxiety and unable to breathe or walk. Such was his distress that his mother, Niamh, had to carry him back home, where she spent hours calming him down. “When I called the school,” she says, “they told me he was probably manipulating me and if I just brought him in everything would be fine. But I know my son. I knew it wouldn’t be.”
Emma Hester, another mother of a school-refuser, believes that the school advice she followed traumatised her six-year-old daughter, Grace, who has ADHD and autism. When Grace was in Year One, she wouldn’t get dressed. But Emma was told to bring her into school in her pyjamas and they would do the rest. “To my shame, I did just that,” she says. “I dragged her into the head’s office in her pyjamas where I was told ‘well done’ for getting her in. Basically, that’s what matters for the school: its attendance record. But there was my child, a gibbering wreck, and now I’m horrified at what we inflicted on her.”
These two children are not alone. One in five pupils is currently persistently absent from school — a number that has doubled since the pandemic — and the education system is panicking. While parents report distress, anxiety and stress, the Department for Education launched what has been described as an insensitive and patronising exercise in “parent shaming”, in an attempt to get these “ghost children” back in the classrooms. The “Moments matter, attendance counts” campaign features smiling children at school with strap-lines such as “This morning he had a runny nose…but look at him now!” and “This morning she was worried about school…but look at her now!”
“They are pitting parents against their children and against teachers,” says Niamh. “When you’re struggling with children who are unable to go to school for a variety of serious reasons, and then you see a poster telling you to get your kid into school and everything will be alright, it suggests it’s your fault.”
A huge number of parents are feeling similarly frustrated at the lack of support for their children, and the insensitivity of the DfE. The Facebook group “Not Fine in School”, set up to support parents of school refusers, now has 33,000 despairing members. One, Claire Gill, wrote: “My son has severe anxiety. We had a well-being person talk to him weekly, which helped him cope, and he looked forward to speaking to them as it was a release. Now, school has stopped the wellbeing person, saying what he has learnt is on his iPad and he can look at that if he gets anxious, [and that] talking is only a temporary fix and he needs to basically learn to manage it himself. He is 10.”
Part of the problem, according to many members of this group, and a majority of the parents I spoke to, is that neither the Government nor the schools are properly addressing the youth mental health crisis. The official numbers are shocking — and that’s only the cases we know about. In the past five years, the number of children claiming disability allowance for anxiety has risen by 70%. And according to a recent survey by the mental health charity stem4, an alarming 28% of secondary school pupils have missed school because of anxiety in the past year. Those suffering the most tend to be children with neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD or autism.
Obviously, the pandemic must bear some of the blame. The clinical psychologist Dr Naomi Fisher puts it bluntly: “Their playgrounds were locked. Their opportunities to play were taken away. Normal life stopped. It was particularly earth-shattering for children, because they found it hard to hang on to what life had been like before.” When these kids went back to school, they were under pressure to catch up educationally, rather than focus on their psychological well-being. The news was full of horror stories about falling grades, not worsening mental health. But it didn’t take long for that damage to show itself.
The result is a system that can no longer cope with the numbers of children presenting with mental health complications. While it was hard enough for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to get help before the pandemic, things are now far worse. More parents than ever are applying for assessment and treatment in the hope of accessing an education, health and care plan (EHCP). But according to the DfE, only 49.2% of applications are established within the requisite 20 weeks, down from 59.9% in 2021. Hundreds of children are waiting more than two years to be issued with the plan that details the support they need.
While requests for EHCPs have surged, funding for them has not. And this growing burden is crippling local authorities. According to the County Council’s Network, which represents 20 county councils and 17 unitary councils, they are not receiving enough financial support from central government. This year, councils’ budget deficits accrued on Send spending are expected to rise from £2.4 billion to £3.6 billion.
It all points to a system in crisis. Emma tells me it took eight years for her daughter, Grace, now 11, to be diagnosed with autism. She still isn’t receiving the help she needs and hasn’t been in school since last October. Emma has taken matters into her own hands and is taking an MA in occupational therapy in order to provide support for Grace herself.
“It’s a two-year course, but that’s still faster than waiting for Grace to get help on the NHS,” she says. “The system is broken. We’ve got a cohort of neurotypical children who can just about manage in a school system. Then you’ve got a big cohort of autistic people with learning difficulties, and they naturally fit into specialist schools.” But, she tells me, it’s the in-betweeners — the cohort of autistic youngsters who don’t have learning difficulties, but really struggle in a large, noisy, overwhelming environment — who are being failed. These children are afraid of school, hate the scratchy uniforms — many children with autism have hypersensitive skin — and can’t cope with the chaos of the playground or dinner hall. “They simply can’t manage,” says Emma. “And the school is doing nothing to reduce the things that they don’t have to stress about.”
Emma is not alone in feeling that her child’s difficulties aren’t being taken seriously. Last year, in a paper entitled “School distress and the school attendance crisis: A story dominated by neurodivergence and unmet need”, psychology researchers at Newcastle University interviewed 947 parents of children who struggled to attend school because of what they termed “school distress”. The researchers found that 92% of these children were described as “neurodivergent” as opposed to “neurotypical”, with 83.4% being autistic — hardly the picture being painted by the DfE’s “it’s just a sniffle” campaign.
No wonder parents are desperate. “They feel their employers, their friends, social services, the local authority and their child’s teachers don’t believe them, aren’t listening and don’t want to hear,” says Dr Sinéad Mullally, one of the authors of the Newcastle paper. “The DfE campaign just feeds into that lack of societal understanding of the problem. Simply getting your child into school won’t solve the problem if the school is the problem.”
This disdain is borne out by what happened to nine-year-old Ellie Green. She has ADHD and autism, and though she loves school, she can suffer from debilitating bouts of anxiety and hypersensitivity. The experience of her mother, Nancy, is typical of so many parents I spoke to.
“Ellie is academically very capable and has always been articulate, so at school they tend not to see how much she struggles in other areas,” Nancy tells me. Ellie often attends school wearing her PE kit, because it is more comfortable than the uniform. But this makes her feel different. “The need to obey the rules and be different at the same time can make her extremely anxious,” she says. “And when she struggles, as is often the case with autistic children, she may growl or make animal noises and the way a teacher responds to this could either calm the situation or send Ellie into a meltdown… A simple understanding of this would go a long way, but sometimes it can result in a teacher punishing or belittling a child.”
All too often, teachers are at a loss as to what to do. They simply aren’t equipped with the strategies to help. According to the 2023 annual education report from the National Autistic Society (NAS), only 14% of secondary school teachers had had more than half a day of autism training. Among primary teachers the figure was 39%. More money being spent on special needs provision probably wouldn’t make a significant difference to Ellie, but a change in the way children like her are treated would. As Tim Nicholls, at the National Autistic Society, told me: “School shouldn’t be a tick-box exercise in attendance. It should be about ensuring all children get the support they need to be able to thrive from well-trained staff who understand their needs. Instead of shaming parents and children for low attendance at school, the government should prioritise urgent reform of the education system.” And while it’s a little more complicated than blowing a runny nose, it wouldn’t actually cost that much.
The Government’s response to this growing catastrophe is to identify problems earlier, and to spend an extra £440 million in 2024-25. This will take spending on SEND to £10.5 billion — an increase of 60% in five years. The Labour Party hasn’t added much, which, as it prepares for government, doesn’t provide anxious parents with much solace. But as Catriona More from the Independent Provider of Education Advice says, just throwing money at the problem isn’t going to make much difference. Local authorities aren’t motivated to ensure that children are given the help to which they’re already entitled. “Following the law seems to be widely regarded as an optional activity, with very little requirement on local authorities to be accountable for this,” she says. “The existing SEND system doesn’t need fundamental reform: it needs to be made to work as it should.”
Not everyone is so positive about the existing system. Others believe wholesale change is required, at least to find a way to understand why so many children need help. Dr Fisher believes that this means facing up to the effects and aftermath of the pandemic. “What is missing in government thinking is accepting that this generation has gone through a massive event in their lives, which undermined the sense of safety that many of them had in the world,” she says.
And right now, the Government doesn’t seem to grasp the extent of the problem. DfE sources insist that the attendance campaign was intended only to discourage absenteeism where children had coughs or mild anxiety rather than serious SEND issues — though they didn’t define “mild” anxiety. But such is the rigidity of our education system, there seems to be little or no attempt to interrogate the reason for these high levels of absenteeism.
Such a careless attitude towards vulnerable children shames the system and consigns that cohort to a bleak future. A child’s needs must come first — not a school’s targets. And if a student is reluctant to go to school, it’s a sign of a greater problem. Perhaps we need to rethink the role of schools: increasingly, they are becoming more rigid in focus — more vocational and less creative. Throwing cash unthinkingly at this is neither going to help the anxious children nor regain the confidence of parents.
“The problem is that they aren’t listening to us, and don’t seem able to learn anything from what we’re trying to tell them,” says Ellie’s mother, Nancy. “Education should be the key to unlocking the world and a passport to freedom. By that measure, more and more of our children are becoming prisoners.”
*Some names and locations have been omitted or changed in order to protect the identities of children.
Steve Boggan is an investigative journalist and former Chief Reporter at The Independent. He is also the author of Follow the Money and Gold Fever.
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SubscribeAs an ex-teacher, I’m not entirely sure that the education system has much purpose any more beyond keeping children off the streets and babysitting them while their parents work. Unfortunately I’m also not sure what alternatives there are either.
I have never understood why Teachers dont say that they will only admit and teach polite well behaved pupils.
It is not a teacher’s job to incarcerate disruptive yobs until they are 16. If school was by invitation only to the well behaved they would have far better academic results.
And those not allowed in ? Not the schools’ problem.
Teachers have tried this, but apparently every child has a right to an education regardless of how disruptive and antisocial they are.
The reason for this is that the society has more of a say on education than teachers. Through OFSTED, the parents and governors can make or break a school – anyone almost can be a governor and make real changes. I have seen it happen. Society needs to ask actual teachers, not academics or polititions or the average person on the street what the answer is. Also not teachers from schools where their children are already well-behaved. Try some of the many disadvantaged areas of the country and ask any of those teachers what would really help.
I’m with you on this, at least in Europe and the U.S.. And because of these grave problems, they’ve become dangerous places for vitality and survival. Ditto for the teachers. Of course, I believe that the lock downs took us to a different level of the collective problem, and i believe this generation of “zine”, not all, has harmed so many.
Interesting. Is there any research on why there has been such a large increase in autism in the past 20 years? And ADHD? It’s seems to be more than half the population.
Surely we can and should find the cause and maybe look for a cure?
I think there has been a tonne of research, looking to explain the increase. No clear answers from what I understand. Better diagnostic techniques and vaccines can’t explain it all either.
And why now do ALL old people have DEMENTIA. I notice they dont call it ALZHEIMERS any more. Yet Dementia sounds more pejorative. Curious. Demented Old Bat. I mean if you wanted to “other” or even “monster” a part of Society…a part that costs you money but (in your accountants vision) is “economically inactive”…I mean it’s not nice to be Demented is it… there must be an Alternative…..it might be YOUR CHOICE….Odd too,to me how successful,attractive people in their 30s,celebs,are proudly proclaiming their early onset of dementia diagnosis. They don’t have it yet but they’ve got a slip of paper to say they will one day, probably to add to the slip saying they’ve got Autism,the one for ADHD,the one for Dyslexia (so yesterday),the one for Dyspraxia, the one for……I suspect doctors are making serious money from selling these bits of paper at £400 a go I’ve heard. It’s like the church selling indulgences in the Middle Ages.
Yes and no. My father had Alzheimer’s, and my mother had both that AND vascular dementia.
When an individual gets those conditions, you’ll know about it, I assure you. It’s not like being “a bit confused”.
By the way, my parents neither drank nor smoked. Existing medical treatments for genuine dementia are well-nigh useless.
There’s more than one kind of dementia; Alzheimer’s is just the most common. My father had Lewy-Body dementia, the second most common type (about 10-15% of all dementia patients); I’d never heard of it until his diagnosis. There are significant differences in presentation and treatment for the different types. Dementia is just a generic term covering the different types, not a pejorative.
“…It’s like the church selling indulgences…” Very good analogy!
I hope you were being funny.
Controversial, but try J B Handley’s How to End the Autism Epidemic.
Exactly. An increase in trans and bipolar disorder, also.
I followed the UK covid inquiry to a limited extent. It looked like a blatant whitewash to me. Yes, maybe the government could have done some things better, but which things and what would have been better? And maybe there were unforeseen, negative consequences of lockdowns, but, of course, that’s exactly what they were–unforeseen and unforeseeable. And if anyone was to blame, well, it’s not clear who, and it’s probably impossible to determine, so let’s not bother.
If the UK government now takes seriously the difficulties some children are having adjusting to school, as described in the article, it will have to revisit the thorny issue of lockdowns and their consequences, which isn’t going to happen. So, in the meantime, parents will be fobbed off with some extra resources and not much else.
I’m not sure about psychological problems, but I hope some enterprising medical professor has started a long-term study charting the physical health of very young children from the covid era through the next 50 years. I’m willing to bet many will show a lifetime of immune dysregulation; diseases such as fibromyalgia where you can see something is happening but it’s hard to pin down the mechanism. The cause will have been lockdowns when the youngest kids didn’t get to play with their peers and catch the usual, minor childhood diseases that train their immune systems. The politicians of our era will all be dead by then, so perhaps the true effects of lockdowns will finally be honestly addressed. And let’s hope there isn’t another pandemic in the meantime, because our leaders will do exactly the same thing all over again–because it’s the “responsible” thing to do, and the WHO recommends it, and they got away with it the first time.
“And maybe there were unforeseen, negative consequences of lockdowns, but, of course, that’s exactly what they were–unforeseen and unforeseeable.”
The negative consequences of lockdown were perfectly foreseeable and widely foreseen. It’s just that the people who foresaw them were shamed, silenced, or both.
Wow, another cohort for the medical governmental complex. Course, I agree with them. Do away with government education. Instead give parents passports and allow schools to compete for students. Someone will figure it out.
The article is fascinating. I am also researching and very interested in this topic. Let your children listen to music for entertainment at Dzwonki Mp3
I suspect children do listen to music!!!
The trouble is that we confuse education with school. We all know that education can happen outside school – and often does.
The government could simply give £6,000 per child per year to parents – ie, the cost of educating children in the state system. Child benefit would be scrapped, for efficiency and simplicity. This could be tax neutral – ie, taxes could stay the same.
The £6,000 per year would be payable for children up to age 22.
There would be no strings attached to these payments. As with child benefit and income support, parents would be able to spend it how they choose.
The government would stop funding schools. Schools would receive money only from parents who wanted to send their children there.
Charitable status would be removed from all schools.
What it could look like
Some parents would be feckless, ignoring their children’s education needs totally. But children of such parents often fail at school anyway. But there would be many advantages:
· Some parents would choose a pick and mix approach, looking for education in certain subjects but not in others, according to their child’s ability and interests. This education could be delivered in a variety of ways: individual tuition, large groups, internet.
· Some parents would outsource their child’s education five days a week (or more). For this, no doubt schools would offer this as a total package and would look little different from schools today.
· Some schools would charge more than £6,000 for the complete package. Some parents would be able to pay the extra and therefore ‘buy’ better education for their children. Not much difference there then.
· Schools would also offer modules – eg, 5-a-side football, GCSE Spanish, sex education – for parents to choose from instead of full-time attendance.
· Parents of disruptive pupils could be told to take their child – and their money – elsewhere. At the moment, significant resources are spent on disruptive pupils, to the detriment of recruitment to teaching and, most importantly, the education of other pupils.
· Non-academic pupils would have funding to pursue non-academic options earlier.
Do we really trust parents enough to hand the money directly to them? Granted, some children might be worse off under this approach, but it would deliver many, many benefits. The children that would be worse off would probably already be in difficult home environments but there are other measure that could help them, rather than producing a poor educational system for everyone.
That’s a really interesting concept and one, I too, have been pondering. It is a common mistake for children to make – that learning is only at school. It is also quite a hurdle to jump for the community at large. I think there are a lot of people within our society who are fantastic teachers, when they are speaking about a subject on which they are passionate. Students learn from passionate teachers and this may be a way of embracing the strengths of many people otherwise undervalued. I wonder if this concept could take off?!
Stonewall and Mermaids have all the answers here, so we’re told.
All these kids with anxiety,issues etc are facing an adult life of extreme poverty and hunger,because in a few years time there wont be any benefits to live off and no jobs,what with migrants being allowed to take jobs and AI doing the rest. Those concerned parents who are encouraging their kids to feel fear and hide at home are condemning their kids to a terrible future unless they Home School them. Which not all can do. I actually agree that schools are horrible places created to produce factory fodder for industry. We should go to small groups of Home Schoolers with Tutors but that won’t happen. I’m 20 years time how are all these anxiety sufferers going to cope as adults.
How do you carry a 14 year old boy all the way home?
I must be feeling cynical today because all I could think reading this was how glad I am to have grown up in the “I’ll give you something to cry about” generation.
Agreed, with the obvious caveat for the highly autistic kids. I was thinking about my own experience. I am a pretty ducked up guy and was the same as a kid (non autistic). I used to hate going to school. When first went I would throw hysterical tantrums, run away etc, etc. I was genuinely very distressed and school was very difficult for me (my poor teachers) but I got marched in every day. I wouldn’t say I got over it but I learnt to get along in life well enough to be a somewhat functional adult. God only knows what would have become of me if I was indulged and taught the world should adjust itself in order to pamper me.
Yes, it was absolutely the same for me. What this author is referring to as “school distress” was part of my daily routine, I hated it. But I was given to understand that you just had to get on with it – and that I had to ask myself how much of the bad situation was actually my fault (a big part of it is the answer). It was a valuable lesson. Plus, I poured all my frustration into my schoolwork – and I did very well at the end of it all. Turning negatives into positives and all that.
I’m not so cynical as to reject the more sensitive treatment of kids who are genuinely divergent – but the whole thing seems to have turned into a free-for-all. At the end of the day, “pull yourself together and get on with it” is going to be the best advice for the vast majority.
Yep, it is a big part of the answer. And the other part of the answer is sucking it up in regards to the parts that aren’t your fault. Nothing is more detrimental to mental health/recovery as a victim mentality. That’s not to minimise or repress whatever has happened to someone. People need to read Job.
I’ve been in and out mental health care my whole life and the biggest change I’ve seen is around diagnosis. When I was a young man there was a scepticism about and reluctance to accept diagnosis’ (I’m not talking about stigma either, I’m not that old). The young people I meet in hospital now collect and display them like Scout Badges.
The terrifying thing is that these “school refusers” kids are going to grow up and raise kids. I’m glad I’m not going to be here to see the result.
One day they will be adults. As adults we do an awful lot of things we’d rather not, “pull yourself together and get on with it” will absolutely become part of these children’s lives, better to start early.
I worry the kids of today may never grow up to be adults… obviously they will get older, but they are not learning life lessons they should
I can remember when I started my first part time job as a Kitchen Porter (worked in it from 2008-09) in a local restaurant, my Dad who at one point worked on a pig farm in his youth, thought I was soft because the environment was horrible. Very stressful, very frantic, the work was hard and any slight mistake or delay was greeted with a pile on of verbal profanities which I would not use to address people who work with or under me with.
Even though I stuck it out until I was dismissed in favour of someone who could do it full time, in the short term, that job was a disaster for me. It really hit my confidence, thinking I’d be terrible in the world at work, and at best, made me very reluctant to find another part time job. I should stress that I wasn’t really a big softy at that point. I was in Army Cadets, I was doing a BTEC in Uniformed Public Services which involved a fair bit of outdoor and exercise sessions with sometimes ex and serving military (course leader was ex-Marines). It really wasn’t until I hit the workforce properly and the work ethic I had built up there did impress future employers and has served me well in my career so far. I dread to think how many of these young people would have coped in an environment like that.
70% increase in the numbers applying for disability allowances for anxiety in the past 5 years? I taught in Upper Schools for 35 years and in a year group of 500 there might be 1or 2 truly autistic pupils.
A number of pupils needed remedial work with reading, maths, organisation skills or behavioural issues. A few were just utterly dysfunctional, usually as a result of domestic chaos.
The middle-classes,however, love a label for their darlings who aren’t up to scratch and the economically challenged are very shrewd when spotting a financial reward.
And you would wish that on others?
The threat of violence approach you are so nostalgic for psychologically scarred many a sensitive children like myself. I’m 60 now and talk with my wife as we reflect on our lives. My mother sometimes would use that exact phrase other times she would whip me with looped roning cord. Or I’d get the back of her hand for crying. I learning that shedding tears are to be repressed. I’ve had a number of mental breakdowns in my life, which I partly attribute to this abuse dynamic. What you describe may work for for typical kids, but for emotionally sensitive people it’s psychologically destructive.
‘Obviously, the pandemic must bear some of the blame.’
Covid-19 is a disease. It was actually the pandemic restrictions that broke so many ingrained social habits – from attending school to attending church.
Bit pedantic don’t you think? We all know what was meant.
No it is a really important distinction that is routinely ignored so we can avoid learning the real lessons of the true cost of lockdown as a response to a future pandemic.
A lot of the issues were there before lockdown but lockdown not only made them worse but the crippling debts the country has taken on due to lockdown gives a double whammy – more kids in need of help and nowhere near enough money available to provide it.
And we can’t trust governments to fix it. In the US but follow the Brit situation as well.
It isn’t pedantic at all. In fact, Richard’s comment is spot on. He’s right to call out the author on this dodging of responsibility. While the pandemic was not within our control, our response to the pandemic was within our control. There were a range of other options available. Covid was most serious in the elderly and those who already had other medical conditions. It was dangerous to the sick and the old. It was less dangerous to people the younger they were, with children being at the least risk. Young people, particularly children, were never in all that much danger.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but apparently it does. For most of human history, the phrase ‘women and children first’ common on passenger voyages at sea summed up the common sense approach of society to dangerous situations. Decisions should be guided by the principle that children and those who provide future children should be protected at the expense of men and the elderly if necessary. That may seem cruel or barbaric but it’s anything but. It’s simply common sense reinforced by centuries of evolution and collective human experience. It is consistent with human biology, natural selection, and the laws of nature in general. The hubris of humanity to believe we can disregard such notions is a fairly recent development, and the fact that COVID played out completely differently than any plague in human history should give us all some pause. During COVID, we basically did the opposite of what nature suggests we should do. Instead of prioritizing the well being and futures of children and our younger cohorts, we basically threw them under the proverbial bus. The most charitable explanation is that the people in charge wanted to save as many lives as possible, without regard for anything else. There are a number of less charitable explanations regularly debated on Unherd and elsewhere. Either way, there were bound to be consequences for going against nature and several thousand years of accumulated human experience.
What we see now is just the tip of the iceberg. If you read the author’s article and think it’s bad now, just wait a decade or so, because so much worse is coming. Children don’t stay young, ignorant, and helpless forever. At some point, they’ll grow up and put two and two together and realize how quick the old men running the world were to throw them and the future under the bus to protect themselves, their money, their ideologies, and the systems they built. Maybe the education establishment can brainwash some of them, but here again, nature isn’t so easily subverted. What teenager doesn’t have a rebellious streak. What generation fails to question those who came before? Think we’re feeling the backlash of COVID now? We ain’t seen nothing yet.
The environment in most state schools has become more authoritarian and driven by numbers, this accelerated during & after the pandemic. Having worked in primary schools as a family support worker, I have been surprised by the level of compliance expected from quite young children and their parents. Safeguarding has become a stick to beat children and parents who are different and mild naughtiness is heavily judged and challenged; exclusions of primary age children are not rare. I believe the mental health crisis in children is partly due to the unrelenting expectations of attendance (& you better be there on time or expect the third degree), academic achievement and the need to be the same as everyone else.
Couldn’t agree more. I think back to my 1980’s primary education and weep for the kids of today. We were pretty free range at school. I barely remember the process of learnig to read or get to grip with maths. (Good teaching). We played about with clay, lego, glue, cooking and I loved learning because it was an engaging experience. I studied maths and sciences and got a university degree at no cost to myself.
I recently heard a 16 year old girl explain that at her school you need a written pass to go to the toilet during lessons if you have a medical condition, a written pass to leave the classroom for a mental health time out, a written pass for behaviour management, I can’t even remember all the categories of written pass required. She proudly declared that she was so f*cked up that she had all the passes and could get out of any lesson by waving the appropriate coloured piece of paper. This isn’t education, it’s a race to the bottom. Everyone feels that they need a diagnosis and an excuse to be a human being. I despair.
The response to the pandemic was great for me. On 7 acres of land, my kids had room to run, there was no end of interesting YouTube videos on gardening, farming or anything else you wanted to learn, the kids did distance education, we got some goats and had to learn a lot, fast. Plus no unnecessary socialising required.
The cause wouldn’t be hard to find practically. Start with digging into the demographics and work from there. If it’s a result of the response to Covid the issue will be across the globe in countries that locked down.
The problem of course would be getting past the political interests groups.
I’d be very surprised if helicopter parenting and child centred insanity wasn’t a big part of the problem.
Nailed it. Smaller families too, with fewer or no siblings to get used to, therefore being among large groups of kids and no longer ‘centre of attention’ sets off very predictable reactions.
Yes, yes, yes! I can’t believe I left family size out, I’m always banging on about that. I’m close to reactionary enough these days (disillusioned classic Liberal) to say the problem is too many fathers out of the household and too many mothers out off the house plus the collapse of Church attendance.
All of this above and the state lack of interest in funding education — at least in the states — who should have children today but those who will homeschool and create a world for a child’s thriving.
One cannot help but wonder how this huge cohort of children managed to go to school in years past. Is our society really that much more stressful and fear-inducing than it was e.g. during WWII? Why would mental illness be so much more widespread now? Or is it just that now people reach for a diagnosis and special help where they managed to cope in the past?
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? … Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
During WWII the general atittude was “We’ve got a job to do”. Today the zeitgeist is “We’re all gonna die!!!”. Makes a big difference to a little kid.
I can clearly remember the apprehension when the siren sounded, the droning and the heavy ack ack commenced. Mother did not come running. No mention was made in the morning. The day was normal apart from the search for shrapnel. School attendance was very high. Mental health seemed normal but in any case ignored.
The effect of the pandemic is different or is it?
My Nan was 10 years old at the outbreak of WWII. Her education effectively ended at that point. Initially evacuated but returning home within months she didn’t have to worry about school again because there was no school. The point being, she spent the next five years at home. Kicking around bomb sites in London and seeing it all as an adventure. Despite that, she is literate, numerate, worked, owns her own home, raised a family and has always said that her generation were not particularly “traumatised”, they just got on with it. School attendance is not the most important thing in the world. Instead of shaming children and parents and hand wringing about the absolute necessity to attend school every day, I’d like to see a system where education is completely reimmagined for the 21st century. Music, art, creativity and love of learning have been abandoned in favour of a narrow, outdated, largely irrelevant curriculum. Schools are run to churn out identikit productive units (and are failing) in order to please the Ofsted inspectors. The SEND system isn’t fit for purpose, if we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results then we are the definition of an unenlightened society.
You expressed my feelings far my eloquently than I managed
We don’t have anything like the level of social cohesion and trust that existed 70 years ago. Respect for authority has broken down hugely. Common moral beliefs have disappeared. Social meeting points have disappeared. Parents and teachers don’t know each other socially to the same degree. Social problems like unemployment, divorce, addiction, long-term sickness are rife. Today’s children also have pressure to explore their sexuality and even gender. All this makes the formation of a stable identity a much harder and longer process for a child.
This article is giving far too much leniency to incompetent parents and instead entirely blaming the nebulous ‘system’. It also pretends that the ‘Pandemic’ was partially to blame and not the draconian measures taken to combat it, the result of human will.
Not a constructive approach IMO. Please read my reply to Rasmus Fogh above
Is there any evidence that focusing on people’s mental health improves their mental health? It seems to me that once you start thinking about mental health it becomes a spiral that feeds off its own anxiety.
I wonder, having been a depressed early teen for 12-18 months, in the era when they ignored you.
You tended to just get better by yourself, because being depressed, in the end, gets boring.
Maybe you did but that doesn’t apply to everyone.
Quite so, but I bet it applies to very many whose lives are probably made worse by intervention
I became a very anxious child after the school made me skip a year. It meant I had to leave all my friends behind, and was in a class where most other pupils were older and bigger than I was. I developed a fake stomach ache to try and persuade my mother to let me stay at home. I’m still grateful to her for having taken a robust view, sending me to school despite my protests, but telling me I could come home if still unwell whilst at school. Needless to say, I soon forgot about my mythical stomach ache and stayed put at school. I went on to pass the 11+ and was successful at high school and 6th form. Had my mother not taken this action, I’m sure I would have ended up as a school refuser, achieving nothing and having no future to look forward to.
Absolutely not. However, it would interesting to find out why there is such an increase in autism and trans kids, as they do seem interconnected. My thought, when I was reading the piece, was what about homeschooling with other, local, autistic kids. If a couple of mothers were stay-at-home mums anyway, they could get homeschooling materials and start a small school. Other parents could chip in with whatever support skills they may have. It should be non-threatening for autistic kids to be around each other. Just a thought.
Much truth in your thought, though it’s not a complete answer, of course. Any problem which demands an organization, a government, a department to focus on that problem runs the risk of becoming self-perpetuating and actually creating more of the problem it was created to solve.
My own son suffered anxiety terribly for a couple of years in the public schools (as we call them in Canada, being publicly funded and run). The answer given us – not accepted – was prescription meds.
Instead, ONE YEAR in a Christian school (private, but worth the expense) made a night-to-day change in him and he went back to the public system armed with the confidence and personality to win the award for top overall student in his final year of high school. Wish we could have afforded – or made it our priority? – to start him in the Christian school.
There is an awful lot of evidence that you are right: Telling people to be introspective and focus on their own feelings and think about mental health problems is extremely counterproductive.
I don’t know about the UK, but if it’s anything like Scandinavia, the increase in lenient parenting has gone hand in hand with a near-evaporation of discipline and order in the schools, particularly in the lower grades. Classroom environments are more often than not chaotic and noisy, expectations are unclear, leaving many kids to feel – rightly – that they’re hardly learning anything of value. Add to this the indiscriminate and empirically unfounded introduction of tablets (it’s been known for decades that computers in classrooms have no appreciable effect on learning outcomes), and the result is a very challenging environment for many kids — boys and those on the autistic spectrum in particular.
It’s one thing to hate school because teachers are strict and demanding and homework is annoying; it’s another to develop anxiety because the classroom is a messy cacophony where learning is next to impossible.
Some teachers like to blame this situation on overprotective parents who won’t take responsibility for their kids’ behaviour, and that’s certainly a contributing factor. But one doesn’t have to read up much on the so-called pedagogy that’s being taught in the academy to realise that something is seriously rotten within the profession as well. The truth is that despite decades of near-continuous, teacher (academy)-driven school reform and an enormous increase of effort and spending, schools today are little better at teaching useful skills than they were 50 or even 100 years ago, and quite possibly a fair bit worse.
Computers in schools haven’t been around for “decades”.
I did an O level in computer studies in 1982.
Admittedly we had to handwrite the code, send it off to a nearby university to have it returned mostly indicating the syntax errors.
By 1986, BBC microcomputers were common.
I used to work in a child and mental health service (CAMHS) in a Northern city 10 years ago and “school refusers” were a significant part of my caseload. We could work with schools and parents and provide early interventions. These days, the service is barely functioning due to funding cuts, poor management, huge demand and ridiculously high referral thresholds. Most children who were referred for “school refusal” were highly socially anxious and often on the autistic spectrum.
Why bother about them at all? School is there, it is provided, if they won’t go, they will lose later in the game of life.
I wonder if schools are somehow less hospitable to the neurodivergent than they were in the past, but I’m not sure what the explanation for that would be. Class sizes? Exam focus? Teaching styles? Technology? Busier commutes? We definitely need more investigation into what is causing this.
Speaking as someone who was sent 3000 miles away from Africa to Scotland to a boarding school – I find myself raising an eyebrow at this article.
“A child’s needs must come first — not a school’s targets. And if a student is reluctant to go to school, it’s a sign of a greater problem. ”
That is nonsense. A school’s job is to teach . The Pupils’ job is to obey the school rules attend on time and learn.
That’s very harsh and rather ignorant.
I agree. Schools should focus on teaching. While there needs to be some in loco parentis care, we overdo it.
The question for is what to do with those students who really don’t want to be there.
My mother was an art teacher who, with zero training, was tasked with taking on children with “special needs” when they were mainstreamed into the public school system. These special needs included physical disabilities like deafness and blindness, “slow” learners, and kids with Down Syndrome. Autism and attention deficit were not among those needs.
When did Autism first appear? ADHD? Is it possible that they are the result of tainted food or medical injury? I have a family member who was “diagnosed” as having ADHD when he was just three years old. His parents immediately put him on Ritalin. How could anyone claim a three year old boy has some sort of attention disorder? Don’t they all at that age?
Given what we know about the pharmaceutical industry and the medical professionals who are happy to surgically mutilate children for profit, I wonder if these maladies haven’t been deliberately manufactured.
I would be very interested in a follow-up article about autism and ADHD in the boomer generation.
I read a book by a Professor of Autism i think at Sheffield Poly as was, IIRC his name is Beardon which sounds great for an academic whether he is bearded or not. He described an awful, terrifying condition but also how near impossible it is to get objective evaluation of how “autistic” any individual is. I think if we took his view as the benchmark there’d be a lot less than 29% with the autism badge. Even allowing the kids to self describe their experience as “awful and terrifying”. Certainly less than 10% today and applying his description to my cohort in the 60s maybe 2-3% weren’t able to cope with school – so thats typically 5-7 souls in any secondary school year. Some were nervous wrecks, others acted out and quite a few went on to lead sucessful lives in the adult world.
I’m sure you could find some speculative publications on the increase in Autism and ADHD if you google it. Add to that an increase in Trans and Bipolar disorder. I’m curious, also.
While I don’t wish to make light of what these families are going through, but as others mentioned, it does beg the question of how will these young people when they reach adulthood and hopefully enter the workforce? I’ll be honest in that when I was younger, I despised school. Absolutely hated it, even though I had a decent group of friends, was rarely bullied etc, I hated the structure and being forced to sit through classes where I had no interest in the subject. Ultimately though, I just got on with it because there would hopefully be a trade off where this would pay off.
By contrast, when I got to college, where the attitude was much more relaxed and you were treated like an adult, I thrived. You were there, because you wanted to be there and you were surrounded by like-minded peers. Even at that point before going to university, I was wary of having to fend for myself, but within a few days it turned out to be quite easy. Maybe these young people once they leave school might be able to replicate the experience I had, but something tells me I’m being overly optimistic.
Horns of a dilemma. Indulging kids’ unreasonable fear of school is bad for them, but as presently constituted, schools are so useless as anything but engines of alienation and distress that keeping kids away from them may actually be good for them. We don’t need to change the kids. We don’t need to change the parents. We need to change the schools.
On the one hand, this smacks of trying to pathologize as much of human behavior as possible. On the other, the gift of the Covidians just keeps on giving. Amid those options, one other point exists – adults who appear to be afraid of children, bowing to the kids’ every wish.
You don’t want to go school today? It’s not a choice; get dressed. And it doesn’t help when nonsense like “parent shaming” creeps into the discussion. My word. Once upon a time, shame was a wonderful tool for regulating behavior, often for self-regulating it. People understood that not everything was about them.
Doing something potentially stupid would not just reflect on them, but on their parents, neighborhood, community, etc. Today, shame has been flipped the other way – it’s not the person engaging in aberrant activity who’s the issue, it’s the one who notices it. https://open.substack.com/pub/alexlekas/p/the-misappropriation-of-shame?r=1r6ixl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
It does seem now that children are more important than their parents. When I was growing up it was the other way around, not that it’s healthier that way, it’s just that I’ve noticed it.
Yes, we (us three kids) had to shut up and do as we were told.
What concerns me is the 28% statistic… if they are like that as children what on earth will happen when they have to do real jobs? Or even fake jobs like the BBC or civil service which as everyone there admits is as much a snake pit as any top bank, legal firm or accountants.
ADHD, Neurodiverse, Autistic, Social Anxiety …….. As my post graduate (psychology) research supervisor once said to me: “If you name it, they will come.”
Trying to think of a new one, ‘Idiopathic Neurodiversity Syndrome’ sprang to mind, but it then struck me that any name I can think of probably already exists as a recognised medical problem.
Little granny killers with their little angel faces killing granny on the exhale are supposed to trust the Science, a load of Dr. Fauci’s patented mRNA goo up inside them should cure that anxiety!
That rant was very relevant to the article wasn’t it. Hope you feel better for sharing it with us
“One in five pupils is currently persistently absent from school …” No supporting evidence for this claim. I would guess that the actual number is closer to 1 in 20, which still means around 60 children in a typical comprehensive. That is a large amount of work for typically one attendance officer, who will also have to follow up day-by-day absentees whose parents haven’t bothered to contact the school, perhaps explaining their to-the-point manner when talking to parents. Some school refusers have genuine reasons: the noise and bustle of a large school, bullying. Others throw tantrums when anyone tries to get them to leave their comfort zone under a duvet. Others are caring for smaller children. Others are working. Others have parents who just don’t value education. It is very difficult for someone sitting in a school office to determine what is the cause.
There is a fundamental point that makes it very hard to accommodate those who genuinely find secondary schools traumatic. For 60 years education has been in thrall to the comprehensive idea; that means every child going to the same school and having the same or similar experience. It would take decades before a change in planning policy would result in more smaller schools being built to accommodate those who want to opt out of large schools.
There is also an issue with the way most schools organise the education of Year 7. Trying to give pupils a taste of as many subjects means that Year 7 students, who have been used to one form teacher in primary school, have as many as 20 teachers in secondary school. Timetabling pressures also require schools to have teachers sharing classes and, in order o protect students closer to exams, this phenomenon is typically worst for Year 7 classes.
The one in five (20%) claim is almost certainly incorrect. Unless “persistently absent” means something other than what it says on the tin.
Having read through the comments, it is interesting to hear people’s views on the balance between what is for a teacher or school to control and what is for the parent or society at large to monitor and oversee. As a Primary school teacher, having taught in both England and Australia, I can see some comparisons but also some huge differences.
One aspect that is most different is the lack of OFSTED in Australia. I can not exaggerate the impact this has on the attitudes of the society as a whole in England. I haven’t met anybody – not in the teaching world – who would agree to ending OFSTED (perhaps some now, after the tragic recent death the HT).
What needs to be understood is teaching is a dynamic profession; constantly changing due to governmental upheval, world and local events and societal drivers. This is not necessarily a positive thing. Children need to be taught the basics in life to allow them the opportunity to function in the adult world. But then event take place and society says – why don’t Primary schools teach children about healthy eating, why don’t schools do more to prepare children for the modern world, why don’t schools support children more with their mental health. Why don’t schools support new parents and make time to welcome them into the environment to brake down some of these barriers between schools and homes.
Well we have! We have done all this and more. Our days are so full of emotional meeting and quiet spaces for some ME time and just a quick informal chat with someone’s mum or carer, after school meetings where we discuss the children and what we will do to support them.
They say teaching is the only job where you lay awake at night worrying about someone else’s children. That is so true. Surely some onus needs to be put back onto the families and communities to support in the other 18 hours of the day when teachers are not being paid to bring up the next generation.
I know this sounds like a bit negative and I love teaching. I just feel sometimes there is too much unreasonable pressure on Primary schools to fix everything. Plus I see such a difference in the community interactions between Australia and England and I don’t think it is all for the best.
Which system do you think is best? My mates missus taught both in England/Wales and Australia and she thought the system itself was much of a muchness, the Aussie one was simply better funded which made her life easier
One aspect of Australian teaching, regarding the lack of OFSTED is that teachers don’t need to compete with each other because you have your job anyway. Data is so important in this country that teachers will use the most underhand ways to ensure their class looks good on paper, thus ensuring their career – usually to the detriment of a fellow teacher. This is extremely exhausting and counterproductive – and all couched in terms like – we only want what’s best for the children, their future is all that is important, if you were working hard you too could get these results. I have actually seen teachers cheating on tests and in tasks in books so they look good.
It is true Australian schools are funded quite well – no school is ever fully content with their budget. I saw written, it will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the military has to hold a cake stall to buy weapons.
It is also true that Australian schools are not free though. It is only a nominal fee, but the parents also buy all the supplies. All this helps. I actually encourage my class to have pencil cases because by Christmas we had forgotten what a glue stick even looked like!
There are a lot of similarities and Australia does have testing similar to SATS but again, slightly different focus. The biggest issue is that parents and governors have such control over a subject about which they are not experts and are actively not listening to the very experts who can tell them how it should be.
“I actually encourage my class to have pencil cases because by Christmas we had forgotten what a glue stick even looked like!” I have read and re-read this sentence trying to work out what it means. How does a pencil case help memory of a glue stick? What is a glue stick? Why are glue sticks necessary in school? etc etc. Could you explain please?
Schools in England provide equipment – pens, pencils, rulers etc needed for children to complete work. Glue sticks -perhaps called PRITT stcks here? They are imperative in schools; in KS1 for glueing pictures onto paper to demonstrate learning and in KS2 to glue work into books to show evidence of physical work – photos of science experiments or learning outside school – local visit to a place or worship.
My reference was that although school starts in September and the schools know each year how much of each supply is needed, there is never enough money to provide these adequately so each class has perhaps 3 glue stick for 30 pupils meaning learning time is spent waiting to glue in something – I was comparing this to Australia where parents supply these for the year and so there are enough glue stick for each child to have their own meaning learning time is not wasted. I encourage my class to provide their own equipment as it means the ‘school’ glue sticks need to be shared between less children. I am in no way saying this is a good thing and many children don’t have their own (and neither should they) but it does help when they do.
This ‘memory’ or a glue stick was implying that by Christmas – only 3 months in the year – there are non left in the school for anyone to use and teachers are actually buying their own resources so learning can continue.
Can it please be taken a read that teachers are being as efficient with their time as possible and not sitting and doing nothing waiting for students to glue in a sheet of paper – but what would be a 15 second job turns into a class discussion or where is THE glue stick, why are you taking so long? Is that the best way to save glue? All so money can be juggled and saved…. in the British Empire! I am in no way condemning all things British and in no way painting a rosy image of the Austalian schooling system, but this is one aspect I have noticed that seems a little ill thought out.
Hopefully this answers your question – if not from a teaching background, i understand the confusion.
No, it doesn’t answer the question about what glue sticks have to do with pencil cases! Who’s on first base?!
Yes, really!! I’m confounded by that, also.
Life itself is much easier in Australia.
You don’t say which is the best! This comment is so poorly written and with spelling errors that you’ll have to stay after school and re-write it. I just hope you weren’t an English teacher.
I am sorry the comment on glue sticks and pencil cases in my comment has confused you to this extent. It seems unnecessary though, to make such a personal slight. You can see from my comments, I have been polite and impersonal throughout. I have also deliberately not made a judgement as a general statement about Australia and England, and your general assumption that life is easier in Australia is unsubstantiated. I would be interested in your evidence of this as a sweeping statement. I wonder what your experience is with the education system here and your thoughts relating to our system on the world stage.
Much like Thatchers closing of the asylums (under the guise of caring of course, never cost cutting) those with low level mental health simply ended up moving from hospitals to prison. Blair’s closing of the special schools and transferring those children into mainstream education (under the guise of caring of course, never cost cutting) we now see those children either struggling immensely and getting suspended/expelled or increasingly not turning up at all
So true, Billy Bob.
Well I used to walk to school, and then walk straight past it. Then what to do? One haunt was the museums at South Kensington though it was miles to walk. In those days they were completely different from now, basically deserted. Those was no multimedia, just things in glass cases and no entrance fee, you just walked straight in. Some of the displays in the science museum had little models of how a mine worked or similar and you rotated a little crank to see it in action. I then had to time my return so that my parents were unaware that I hadn’t been to school, I was also pretty tired after being on my feet all day walking about.
School was a large comprehensive and even then many of the classes were chaotic, without structure the intensity of interactions was overwhelming, you always had to be on guard. I expect things are a lot worse now with smartphones in the mix. Thanks to these technological changes it may be the case that school just no longer works for many.
Interesting how unsympathetic so many comments are to the quoted parents. Closing the schools in the pandemic was the worst possible thing, leaving children isolated with their ‘smart’ phones and parents who were understandably anxious themselves.
Thinking back to how much I hated school most of the time from ages 4-18 yet how necessary I now understand it to be, I believe more time spent on non-examinable activities like sport, more practical art and music would have eased the stress so much.
Sport was the one thing I hated at school. We wasted half a day a week sitting around trying to avoid having to chase a ball. The teachers sat talking, their backs to us so they didn’t have to intervene. I still hate sport!
You’re lucky it was only one thing!
I too hated school and got out as soon as I could. I have since educated myself and have been free to pursue interests that I have an innate ability for. Not that this has anything to do with the article. Yes, the comments here are disconcertingly harsh and ignorant.
Reading the article I am just staggered at the extent to which both teachers and parents have lost their way. Children need discipline, boundaries, and they need to be socialised – like puppies. They need to be told what to do, and then if necessary, made to do it.
What they absolutely do not need is an expensive, ill-judged and badly handled “government intervention” ending up with a life-long quasi-medical label to make them feel sorry for themselves or “special and different” or to “other” them. To medicalise some of these conditions in the way that we do, is absolute insanity and tantamount to child abuse.
I hope you are childless.
What a sophisticated and intelligent response
I thought so.
Exactly Kolya, and all the other harsh commenters.
I worked in F.E. fo over 18 years and received no training in understanding/dealing with students with autism or any other problems associated with neurodiversity.
If I had, then I would have recognised what was happening when my previously bubbly school-loving daughter started to have anxiety attacks at 14 which progressed into school refusal.
Shewas diagnosed as being autistic at 21.
“Obviously, the pandemic must bear some of the blame.”
Rather
“Obviously, lockdown must bear some of the blame.”
‘Local authorities aren’t motivated to ensure that children are given the help to which they’re already entitled. “Following the law seems to be widely regarded as an optional activity, with very little requirement on local authorities to be accountable for this,” she says.’
Since most schools have now become academies, local authorities have no control over what policies schools adopt. And even if they did, they no longer have the money and staffing to respond.
Jonathan Haidt is brilliant on the child & teen mental health crises we’re seeing. The main causes in his opinion: 1. Too much coddling / over protection – not enough kids are outdoors playing together 2. Too much tech which leads to not enough time face to face with other humans & real addictions. Giving a kid a smart phone is like giving them crack. See _The Coddling of the American Mind_ for some scary data.
The paradox seems to be parents today want their kids 1. inside where they know they’re safe but 2. distracted, which means on devices, so they can get their own chores / work done. I absolutely experience this as a parent myself but am holding firm on not giving my daughter a smart phone, even though she’s the only girl in her year without one (she’s 11).
The politicians, Teaching Unions and Scientists who closed our schools for 2/3rds of a school year have a lot to answer for in this regard.
I hated school, and was bullied every day. I stuck it out, and am much the better for that.
Speaking as a teacher of many years who enjoys his work and enjoyed his own education I think we over value education.
Of course, students should learn to read and write and their being in school is a great way of learning how to handle other people (especially horrible ones). I think, too, that if a young person becomes fascinated by, mathematics, we should support and encourage that. However, though it’s paid my mortgage, I can’t see forcing young people all to sit in rows and learn stuff of little value is particularly helpful.
Quite a long time ago the government started fining parents who took their children on holiday during term time. Gradually, the state is following the Birbalsighn model of military style discipline; it’s gets them their GCSEs, true and I can’t really form much of an argument against it. Yet, it makes me uneasy. If the aim is better qualified workers it succeeds but what’s the point when economic productivity hasn’t increased in decades and young people seem to be miserable.
I’m fortunate in that students at my school are overwhelmingly self motivated and, while ambitious, seem to have a sincere interest in their subjects, so what do I know?
Still, my instinct tells me that it’s going really badly. I can’t put my finger on what’s really wrong and certainly have no idea how to fix it but believe there’s a complacency in the world of education and they keep making the sector bigger and bigger to fix it. The example above of require more and more special needs provision and therapy in schools seems a prime example.