Why more kids are saying no to school

Sam Hawley: In Australia, an increasing number of children are missing school and that does not mean a few sick days here or there. For a while, COVID was blamed, as students adjusted back from lockdowns, but now we know there’s much more going on. It’s been dubbed school avoidance or refusal. Now the terminology is shifting to school can’t. Today, filmmaker Sascha Ettinger-Epstein on her Four Corners investigation. I’m Sam Hawley on Gadigal Land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sascha, many people might think about an increase in the number of kids not going to school has some sort of link with COVID, you know, post lockdown phenomenon. But actually, this has been going on or increasing over time, hasn’t it? For a long time.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: Yeah, well, attendance statistics across Australia have been declining for 10 years. They definitely plummeted during COVID because it was difficult to measure. Everybody was locked in. But afterwards, it hasn’t recovered, you know, as much as departments of education would like, I would imagine.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, I can see it’s down at around something like 88%. In 2014, it was sitting at around 92 or almost 93% attendance rate. And that’s a percentage, but that’s a lot of kids, right?

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: It is a lot of kids and it’s a lot of days missed. We know that under half of all year 7-10 students are absent for more than 20 days a year. And over the course of an education, it really adds up. There’s all sorts of different types of attendance issues. And the problem with data is that there’s no national sort of attendance codes for like, why did you miss school? I mean, a lot of kids miss school if they’re sick, or, you know, some families after COVID thought, well, they don’t value being at school as much. So they will go on holiday during the term or, you know, and some people discovered that they prefer to learn at home. So they’ve kind of enrolled in virtual schools. The problem with the school refusal data is that there is no data that is specifically to that. Attendance captures all sorts of reasons why you might miss school.

Sam Hawley: Okay, now I want to talk about the terminology, because they’ve been called school avoiders. They’ve been called school refusers. But actually, through your documentary, you’ve really established that they are not the right terms for these people.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: No, they’re absolutely, you know, they lead you to think the wrong thing. It’s the children that are affected by this are not refusing at all. They want to be at school, but there is barriers and they just can’t. So going into the school environment, there’s something triggering them that creates a massive stress response. And while they want to be there learning amongst their peers and, you know, furthering their education, they just can’t, like physically cannot. And I actually found it quite shocking because, you know, I met young, healthy, intelligent students that just can’t participate in education. It’s really only come into visibility in the last few years. And it’s probably from a groundswell of the people affected. They started to become advocates for themselves. This school can’t Facebook group has amassed like over 11 and a half thousand members. They’ve got 2,000 people on the waiting list. So because of the misunderstanding of the phenomenon of people thinking, oh, these kids are just like defiant or they’re wagging or it’s lax parenting or permissive, because of that, the problem is usually shunted on to either the child or the parent and the family, rather than the system.

Sam Hawley: It’s sort of that, you know, toughen up. You’ve got to go to school. So just get on with it.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: Absolutely. I mean, it’s an attitude that’s been around for a long time. And when I first embarked on this story, I thought, what do you mean? Everybody goes to school. I mean, it’s just it’s a rite of passage. You know, it’s supposed to be torturous to some degree. Stop being a snowflake, eat a cup of concrete and just get on with it. So I was quite sceptical and, you know, I had learnt a few lessons of my own, I have to say, in undertaking this project.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, all right. So just tell me a bit more about that. You obviously spoke to a number of families that are struggling with this. Tell me about Genevieve.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: She has three sons. One of them has just become school age, but the other two are in their early adolescence, I suppose.

Sam Hawley: One of her sons, William, he was, you know, he used to shake when he went to school. It was a physical reaction to schooling.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: Yeah. She said he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep. He was so stressed. He tried to jump out of the moving car.

Genevieve Rowney, parent: William’s reaction to having to go to school every day, it was so extreme. Lots and lots of crying, begging. His body would just shake like a terrified puppy. He was putting himself in some very, very dangerous positions.

Will: And I was just like, man, I honestly can’t do this for 13 more years, every day. I don’t know how to explain, but I’d put on this fake personality where it looked like I was enjoying it and it looked like I was fine. But deep down inside, it was just physically draining and just mentally, I just hated it.

Sam Hawley: OK, so the older two, they both have been homeschooled for a number of years because they cannot go to school.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: Yes, they just, right from kindergarten, they had an extremely adverse reaction to going to school.

Genevieve Rowney, parent: You know, we had tried everything at this stage. We had a psychiatrist on board, psychologist, OT, every professional under the sun. And the teachers at his school were so lovely. Like, everybody was trying their best. But still, my son’s attendance, it dropped to a certain point where it seemed like it must be out of the hands of the school. So then the department…

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: She herself was the school captain. She studied at uni. She became a psychologist. And ironically, she was working in the UK in the space of school attendance, you know, helping kids, you know, reintegrate into school. And when she says, like, how could this be happening to me? She couldn’t accept it. And she tried absolutely everything under the sun. It just did not work for her sons. And she finally had to kind of accept that they would not be participating in the mainstream type of education.

Sam Hawley: William, who we mentioned, he has ADHD, doesn’t he?

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: And autism, yes.

Sam Hawley: And autism. And so that’s another complex layer there.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: But he’s also intellectually gifted. So he’s called twice exceptional. This is a phenomenon where kids are intellectually gifted and autistic at the same time. And yeah, he’s really bright. He’s got so much potential. But the school environment, he cannot cope.

Sam Hawley: Other parents that you spoke to, you know, from within this Facebook group that we spoke about, their kids also have, you know, conditions like that. ADHD, anxiety maybe. Tell me about Symone. She was another woman that you spoke to, a mother.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: Yeah, Symone, she’s an advocate for her kids over in Western Australia. And yeah, she has been sort of forced into homeschooling as well. Her kids just cannot attend school. And they had a, you know, very abrupt departure from mainstream school despite them trying everything.

Symone Wheatley-Hey, parent: I dropped him off at school one day and he just broke. It was clinging to me. He was refusing to go in. And his behaviour escalated to the point that it was unsafe. He was in complete and utter crisis. There was no one on the student services team who was there that day. So no social worker, no youth worker, no case manager for Henry, no school psychologist, no school counsellor. There was no one. And he was removed by ambulance. And it was absolutely heartbreaking.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: But her kids both have autism and ADHD as well. And neurodiversity seems to be quite highly represented in the statistics on young people who have this school can’t situation. So yeah, she’s like really struggling.

Symone Wheatley-Hey, parent: I want to be at work. I want to be contributing to society. I want to be earning an income for my family. I want to be setting an example for my kids.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: And the parents as well as the young people get very isolated because they can’t participate in anything. And if you think of like athletics carnivals and all the fun stuff in school, they don’t get to do that either.

Sam Hawley: And Sascha, I think what you really did find out from talking to all of these families is that mainstream schooling, which hasn’t changed that much for a long time, it just isn’t designed to meet the needs of a diverse array of children, of young people, of people who might have mental illness, anxiety, ADHD, all of those sort of things.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: Yeah, I mean, I’m not an expert, but all of the stories that I heard were that the mainstream setting just hasn’t evolved enough. People bend over backwards on an individual basis, but the class sizes are, you know, large. There’s just not enough support within the mainstream setting in general terms. If the principal just thinks the kid is being defiant or lazy or which a lot of, there is still a lot of misinformation about the school can’t situation, then they just won’t make, you know, accommodations for that child.

Sam Hawley: Well, Sascha, let’s then talk about what can be done, if anything, to try and address this and to make it so kids can get to school, but not just get to school. They need to enjoy going to school. Just tell me about the MacKillop Specialist School because that is a school that’s really addressing this.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: Yeah, as they say, it’s not rocket science. They have small classes. They have a philosophy of unconditional positive regard. They have an approach where they just care for the students. It’s like pastoral care, I guess. Like the teachers just love and are invested in the success of the students. I think the students just feel really cared for and valued.

Perri Broadbent-Hogan, Co-principal: Morning, Jack. How are you feeling? It’s great to see you. Thanks for coming to school. Good to see you. Morning, Ben. Morning, Daniel. Welcome to school. Thanks for coming in. Morning, Jack. Lovely to see you, mate. Thanks for coming to school.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: When they were doing not so well in the mainstream setting, they felt like a failure and just, you know, this constant feeling of I’m not good at this and they don’t want me here just erodes a child’s sense of confidence and self-esteem. And then why would they want to go?

Sam Hawley: One of the co-principals there, Perri Broadbent-Hogan, she sounds pretty amazing, but part of it is it’s being able to deal with problems when they arise as well, isn’t it? And being able to deal with them well.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: Yes, absolutely. She deals with some pretty intense situations and all the staff are trained to deal with things that can go awry.

Perri Broadbent-Hogan, Co-principal: *Banging* I might need to go deal with that, Sascha. Maybe just come out here because we might break a window. I would love to just go out there and give him a really big hug. Yeah, because sometimes that’s what they’re telling us they need in those moments is just a little bit of extra care.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: But yeah, she’s just gentle and caring and never judging. Just always holding the student in this unconditional positive regard that they’re not their behaviour. They are a person that is experiencing something.

Sam Hawley: The New South Wales Education Department also has a pilot program that it’s running for high school students with chronic attendance problems. Just tell me about that and is that helping, do you think?

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: Absolutely. Well, they’re trialling this particular program and it’s interest-led learning. So the students, I mean, some of them have been away from school for like years and they go into this classroom again, they feel valued, they feel cared for and they’re allowed to choose their own project. It’s project-based learning. They do a deep dive into a particular subject matter that they’re really interested in and then they have to show how it hits the different parts of the curriculum. I mean, one of the students there that I met, her attendance had tanked down to 7% and is now up to 85%.

Sam Hawley: As you mentioned though, these schools and the pilot programs, they’re quite small, they can only take a certain number of students and there’s really long waiting lists for these schools. So it sounds like, Sascha, that really a lot more needs to be done to stop this decline in attendance.

Sascha Ettinger-Epstein: If there’s more done within mainstream school settings to catch the people who are at risk so that it doesn’t develop into such a huge problem and so much school missed, then that’s a lot more effective. It’s like early intervention as with everything, you know, pays dividends. I think if we can just achieve some kind of understanding of what people are going through just to debunk what most people think it’s a bunch of slackers, just make them go to school, then it will go a long way.

Sam Hawley: Sascha Ettinger Epstein is a filmmaker. You can watch her documentary tonight on Four Corners on ABC TV at 8.30 or on iview. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald with audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. To get in touch with the team, please email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening.