“No attendance score is worth your suffering”
Cassandra Lovelock makes the case for why the UK government’s ‘drive to improve school attendance’ will have detrimental impacts on neurodivergent children, young people, and their families.
The idea that children and young people who missed significant amounts of school are ‘skivers’ is incredibly harmful. The ‘Major National Drive to Improve School attendance’ has recently been announced by the government - Within it, they argue that having a child in a classroom, even for an hour, is incredibly beneficial [1]. UK Education Secretary Gillian Keegan MP said her number “one priority was tackling attendance” [2]. This came after a study showed 22.3% of pupils were consistently absent over the last academic year [3].
The fact is, though, so many children and young people are not ‘skiving school’ they are unable to attend for a large variety of reasons: many disabled and neurodivergent people find traditional classroom settings inaccessible, overwhelming, and often isolating. Being forced to mask through a school day is exhausting and is known to lead to burnout among neurodivergent children. Why children and young people aren't in school is complex and multifaceted - neurodivergent children and young people are likely to be experiencing bullying or mocking from teachers, anxiety, mental ill health, or loneliness. While other children may be missing for multiple factors such as caring responsibilities, physical illness and disability, school sites being inaccessible, being unable to get to school due lack of money or public transport to name a few reasons.
Why do you keep making bad choices?
The system's inability to provide a safe and educational environment and keep neurodivergent kids safe in classroom and school settings is the key driver behind the ‘lack of attendance’ the government is so insistent on tackling. Whether it is due to bullying or unmet support needs, neurodivergent children often want to attend school but feel far too overwhelmed and unable rather than reflecting on the system we've built, which means we're failing to keep these children safe in classrooms.
Often these experiences compound for neurodiverse children – being forced to stay in school can lead to exhaustion, anxiety, panic attacks and burnout from constant masking. This can make a neurotypical school environment something incredibly traumatic and the idea that we are just ‘skiving’ school or not trying hard enough adds to the pressure we already put on ourselves. Couple that with the Schools Bill 2022 [4] attempting to increase powers to fine parents and take parents to court for non-attendance, the pressure to stay in school comes from all angles on neurodivergent kids and commonly leads to mental breakdown, hospitalisation and in some cases completed suicide.
You aren't going to get very far in life if you don't go to school
Neurodivergent kids aren't skipping school. We are hurting from the bright lights, loud noise levels and crowds, and no space or time to pause and regulate ourselves. We are burnt out trying to navigate a neurotypical school system which demands we learn in a way which is in opposition to how our brains are wired. We can’t stim, are subject to rules around when we can go to the bathroom and forced into chafing uniforms that are, frankly, a sensory hell. We often love being in school and learning, but we're desperate to please, terrified to get in trouble and spend far too much time agonising over these things than actually engaging in learning.
When we start school, often we love learning, we bloom in education and have an invested curiosity for the world. But by secondary school, I was hiding in school bathrooms and self-harming just as a way to get through the day. I am bearing the scars of my school's inability adapt to my personal circumstances and educational differences. And they will follow me my whole life. But do tell me how it's better that we attend school for an hour than stay home and learn in an environment which is safe and suitable for our needs.
It might feel like in our conversations of people not attending school those who cannot attend due to health are exempt. That you’re talking about those who do not attend due to truancy or boredom. But the fact is when you look at the statistics around school attendance, you are talking about us – the neurodiverse population. Connolly, Constable & Mullally [5] (2023) found that 92.1% of people with significant absence from school were neurodivergent with 83.4% being Autistic and irrespective of neurodiversity, 94.3% of school attendance problems cite they were underpinned by significant emotional distress - whether anxiety, depression, self-harm/suicidality, or coping in a Covid world [6]. The argument that attending school is vital for a child’s wellbeing falls the moment you consider any child whose wellbeing has a level of ‘complexity’. In fact school is often a significant contributor to poor wellbeing for neurodivergent and mentally ill children and young people.
This obsession with a punitive approach targeting families already struggling with the effects our inaccessible inequitable world; from families forced to the poverty line, dealing with societal oppression and trauma such as dealing with the welfare system, access to healthcare and employment opportunities through to families with children living with the impacts of trauma that occurred in school settings. The government's campaign feels deliberately ignorant of so many of the lived experiences of children and young people.
How we learn, flourish in education, and grow as people cannot and should not focus on and forced us to mould into the neurotypical standards of education. In reality the school system is failing to centre and provide for the educational needs of any child whose life/learning deviates from the norm.
These days I have a PhD; I have books and papers and a platform where people are willing to hear what I have to say, and that is a blessing. It is also, by our current government’s logic, a complete impossibility due to my awful school attendance. Learning, education, and growth is far more than what happens in classrooms. Until the education system (from pastoral care, to school buildings and teachers' salaries) is more adequately funded, punitive measures like school attendance will do nothing but push children and their families further into stress, anxiety and poverty.
[1] Major national drive to improve school attendance - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
[2] ‘’
[3] Persistent absence and support for disadvantaged pupils: government responses to the committee’s seventh report: Persistent absence and support for disadvantaged pupils: Government response to the Committee’s Seventh Report (parliament.uk)
[4] School attendance: Schools Bill Fact Sheet 2022 School attendance - Schools Bill Factsheet (publishing.service.gov.uk)
[5] Connolly, S. E., Constable, H. L., & Mullally, S. L. (2023). School distress and the school attendance crisis: a story dominated by neurodivergence and unmet need. Frontiers in psychiatry, 14, 1237052.
[6] ‘’
