🏫 School Attendance 🏫

Why do more and more children and young people dislike school? Since COVID, this has increased dramatically, especially for those over the age of 12. Could ESNA be the answer?

🎓 What is ESNA? 📋

Emotional School None Attendance (ESNA) is a term used by educational professionals to describe children and young people who struggle to attend school due to SEN and/or mental health reasons.

Reasons for ESNA

Children and young people (CYP) may refuse to attend school for a wide range of different reasons that could be placed under the umbrella term of ESNA. Typically these are anxiety, stress or SEN needs.

• 📝Anxiety: This most commonly comes around exam season(s).

• 📵Stress: There are many reasons why students experience stress at school. Unfortunately, due to social media, the most common cause is usually bullying.

• 🤝SEN: Due to the rise in CYP with SEN needs, Schools are struggling to input the right level of support, even with their graduated approach.

🤔 What can you do? 💡

There are some easy and effective ways you can start to unpick the reasons for ESNA and start to put things in place to increase attendance. In this post, we will look at 3 main ways to unpick ESNA. However, it’s worth noting that school should be the ones taking the lead on this and supporting to identify the reasons for not attending school.

RAG - School Timetable 🔴🟠🟢

This activity is super easy to do and is often the only one that is needed. All you need to do is ask the school for a copy of your child’s timetable. In some schools, they have an A Week and a B Week on a 2-Week rota, so make sure you have both.

All you need is 3 coloured highlighters, Red, orange (Amber) and Green, hence why it is called RAG.

Ask your child to highlight the lessons using the following key:

🔴 = Would avoid these lessons if possible.

🟠= Can tolerate these lessons.

🟢= Favourite lessons and would like more of these.

Once you have a nicely coloured timetable, ask your child to explain what it is about a red lesson that makes it red. Do the same for the orange and green. Some common answers are below:

🔴 = Dislikes the teacher, doesn't like the physical classroom, a particular child in the lesson distracts them.

🟠= Doesn’t fully understand the lesson content, isn’t supported in the lesson, the classroom is far away.

🟢= Favourite teacher, Friends in the lesson, feels supported etc.

The idea now is to share this with the school and try to get as many things from the green lessons into the orange and red lessons. For example, if your child prefers a specific part of the school or teacher. They may allow them to change sets for one or two lessons a week to build up their attendance. School should have some ideas too, once you share the coloured timetable with them.

RAG - School Map 🔴🟠🟢

As you’ve probably guessed, this is the exact same process but with the map/floor plan of the school. Ask your child to draw a rough floor plan of their school and then ask them to colour the map using the same system as above. Again, some common answers are below:

🔴= Corridors, cold classrooms, canteens, bus stops, drop-off & pick-up area

🟠= most classrooms, sports fields, stairs

🟢= specific classrooms, form area, break-out spaces

Once you have your coloured map, discuss how they could either avoid the red areas or maximise the green and orange areas. For example, if corridors are a real issue, could they leave lessons early and walk a long way to the next lesson, avoiding the corridors? Again, if you discuss this with the school, they should have more suggestions.

ESNA Cards

The final one is an amazing resource from an Educational Psychologist named Dr Jerricah Holder. These are school wellbeing cards. The cards consist of 40 picture cards and an instruction leaflet. The cards are used in a sorting activity where children identify barriers to their well-being at school as well as resilience factors that help promote school attendance and well-being. The activity encourages a collaborative problem-solving approach, involving the child in discussions about strategies, interventions, and environmental adaptations that could be beneficial for them.

Some examples of the words on the cards are as follows:

• "I feel happy at school when..."

• "I feel worried at school when..."

• "Something that helps me feel better at school is..."

• "A challenge I face at school is..."

• "Support that would help me at school includes..."

As with all the other examples, if you share the results of these with your school, they should be able to offer some ideas that might support increased attendance.

I hope this has been an informative and helpful read! High attendance is key to a successful time in school. So using these techniques to remove as many barriers as possible should hopefully help!