October 10, 2025
News
Source: tes Magazine | Repost Fight for Life Foundation 10/10/2025 –
A couple struggled to get their daughter to school. They tried everything, but the girl’s anxiety and fear only brought on fresh psychosomatic concerns to fuel her continued absences.
This is a story that’s currently being repeated in many households, in many different countries, as schools continue to grapple with the issue of attendance.
In England, for instance, while recent government figures show that there has been a year-on-year rise in pupil attendance, severe absence remains on an “alarmingly upward trajectory”, according to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). The picture is similar in the US.
England’s education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has recently urged schools and parents to “double down” on making sure children attend school.
So why is persistent absence such a problem? There is a multitude of reasons, but one key factor is a shift in the relationship that children and parents have with schools. My research in the last 25 years has pointed to this consistently. There has been a change not just in how students show up in schools, but how schools show up for them.
In 1996, an Indiana public school commissioner was cited in a paper by Dunlop as stating: “Our allegiance should go to the kids who want to be there and not the kids who don’t want to learn”. I would argue that the problem is not that students do not want to learn, but that our education systems no longer spend enough time thinking about their care.