A school absence of what? Common sense?
Kids are increasingly off school in term time, reports the Guardian - with headteachers worried about a “cultural shift” causing a crisis in attendance, as more pupils are now absent than they were before Covid.
There are fears in Whitehall and across the education sector that it will take years to ‘repair’ attendance stats – a vital plank of Ofsted assessments.
Yep. They’re right. Covid changed everything. It’s not that Covid made us lazy parents, determined to raise two fingers to a failing system. It’s that it took off the blinkers, and for the first time, gave us the chance to put our disabled kids’ mental and physical health and wellbeing first.
It never fails to surprise me that education decision makers and educators – those who are supposed to encourage us to think – put their focus on attendance at all costs, rather than looking at the roots and drivers of absence, and fixing those things.
