Can't Not Won't by Eliza Fricker

Author:Eliza Fricker [Fricker, Eliza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: review_metadata
ISBN: 9781839975219
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2023-02-20T23:00:00+00:00

‘All it needs to say is just being in school is enough’

As a parent I will not be alone in having heard the above words, or words conveying a similar sentiment. This is the point at which the school realises that simply getting into school will have involved a child drawing on such depths of determination and courage that learning is a virtual impossibility. The point when having spent all their energy ensuring their ‘emotional safety’, learning is not only impossible for these children but sadly has become irrelevant.

This is the point when ‘stress exceeds support, when risks are greater than resilience and when “pull” factors that promote school nonattendance overcome the “push” factors that encourage attendance’.1

In reality, it is likely that any ‘active’ learning with any tangible intrinsic motivation fizzled out long before. It is at this point we have to ask ourselves where our priorities lie. When a child’s attendance mark is of higher value than their engagement in learning, we have a problem. That problem, or a very significant part of it, would be addressed if we looked at the virtually irreconcilable competing priorities of school and home – a ‘competition’ over which neither has ultimate control but in which the performance of both will be judged.

Imagine for a moment the family for whom it is becoming a reality – the success of their child’s education might be determined not by what they got out of school, but simply how many days they managed to get in. For balance, spare a thought too for the staff in the school whose careers are on the line if the call from Ofsted comes and their attendance marks don’t cut the Department for Education mustard.

When I was teaching, I hadn’t joined the profession to ensure children attended 95 per cent of the time. As a parent, my aspirations for my children were not that at 16 the success of their time at school might be measured by the amount of time they spent in school.

An ‘in at all costs’ approach to attendance comes at a significant price. To children, to parents and carers, and to schools and the professionals who work in them. It also constricts and narrows the possibilities as to how we can go about educating our children. Our shared efforts should not involve a fight to get children to attend – presenteeism is not ‘attendance’ and attendance figures do not indicate a child’s emotional preparedness to learn – but to enable them to learn, to be educated and to be happy.

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