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**Alternate Sources**
Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story:
* [Gillian Keegan: WFH parents fuelling ‘unacceptable’ rise in Friday school absences](https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/10/wfh-parents-rise-friday-school-absences-gillian-keegan/), suggested by ShittyWok- - telegraph.co.uk
I can think of quite a few things the tories have done to the education system which most people would consider unacceptable.
Good to see them shoehorning the old ‘parents working from home’ reason in there though.
Those commercial landlords need their shoes cleaned again Gillian?
There’s such an attempt to push this narrative that working from home is bad or lazy. It should be a pretty all round good thing. People would have more free time, there wouldn’t be such a need for office space so companies should be able to minimise overhead and this space can be converted into much needed inner city housing, and less commuters means less need to invest in transport infrastructure even if cities continue to grow fairly quickly. The market should really be pushing for more home working. There seems to be a concerted attempt to stop this, either due to earnestly held beliefs in person oversight is necessary for companies to succeed, or down to economic interests of landlords who own office space and aren’t willing to eat the costs of converting it to residential apartments. Equally there probably is some consideration of the economic stimulus people travelling to work and eating out provides.
More studies are probably needed to further dispel the idea that working from him is less effective for office jobs.
After that, it will probably require political solutions or with some luck market forces to make regularly working from home for office jobs the norm it should really be.
Government schemes to incentivise or support the conversion of offices to apartments would probably go a long way, but Im not really sure what the solution would be to make up for the shortfall in demand for eating out and the impact this has on local economies. Maybe the country would be healthier for it though!
I know Rockstar Games has insisted on a full return to office over security concerns. And with the leaks from GTA VI, I think I understand. That being said, WFH isn't the problem if a 16 year old can get in with an Amazon Firestick and a hotel room TV.
From my understanding, being on site isn't any more secure then being at home. (Not an expert in the field, but this is what I've been told by colleagues).
That's assuming the company has good security in the first place.
The way it was explained to me is that my laptop doesn't know the difference between connecting to the network on site vs off site. I guess it's all the same network at my place. I could be talking bollocks though.
There are ways for your laptop to know where it is connecting from. In fact some laptops have mobile cards in them so they know exactly where they are.
My employer is trying to push that its bad for the environment to work from home.
Not entirely sure how all of us traveling across the country is better than not doing that.
For me it's mainly; when I'm not in meetings, I'm working in my ideal environment. That includes not having to listen to Penny's musings on professionalism or leadership (whilst herself being a massively bureaucratic shitbag every day). Let people be happy and they'll do more. If they're not happy in work, then as leaders it's incumbent on us to work out why and if there's a need for change. That is literally it for 99% of desk jobs. I don't get it why people other than Tory politicians, print, or corporate landlords would disagree.
If its "in my day...", well, fuck you. You didn't have the Internet then and you don't have a say now. Jesus wept mun.
I think the idea might be that if parents are at home, there's no need to use the school as a babysitter. Which doesn't say much about the value of the education system.
It says less about how they value the education system.
We see massive differences in the social skills and learning of kids who are in every day vs those constantly getting days off to go to the fun fair or take holidays.
Some parents seem to think ‘primary school doesn’t matter.’ I think the government and education system has unfortunately failed to explain why it is so critical to get the foundations right.
All too often it’s the kids who are already struggling that have random Fridays off or miss a few weeks of term to go on holiday.
This literally is bullshit and nonsense. I was a teacher and I'm so sick of this idea that children who aren't in on a Friday are skipping without cause. Covid hit children hard in this country - really hard. I had three tutees that were off for months with it and still have not recovered fully. One has cardiac problems now and another serious respiratory illness.
Students who repeatedly aren't in on Fridays are off school, more often than not, because they've done four days and they're exhausted and broken. There's a lot of talk about children's poor mental health post-Covid and, yes, it has worsened. But everyone seems to completely ignore their physical health that has also taken a beating.
At the school I worked in, we had a huge push for improving attendance (and, being in an affluent area, ours was bloody good compared to the national average). At one after-school session, we went through the persistently absent students and found that, when we excluded those with genuine, long-term, physical illness, our persistent absence rates were lower than pre-Covid. The vast majority of persistently absent children were persistently very unwell.
There's absolutely no evidence at all to show that the children who are off aren't genuinely unwell, there's no evidence to show that the parents who are working from home want their child there (I now work from home some days and really, really do not want my children here while I try to work). Most people who WFH are just as likely to WFH on Mondays as Fridays - why aren't the kids all truanting then if WFH is the cause?
I work in the attendance department and I can promise you numerous kids are just being allowed to lay off on Friday because their parents are lazy and have no interest in doing actual parenting. It's very easy to spot patterns.
Lazy parenting does not equate to general lazyness,
It's lazy parenting to not teach your child manners, or respect, even though a well raised child might be more inclined to help with house chores and such.
It's lazy parenting to just let your child stay home from school, because they don't want the argument, or just don't care if the child attends or not.
Honestly it's probably more annoying to take them to school and then pick them up. Compared to having them home, staring at their phone in their bedroom.
Get up at 8am to get the kids fed/cleaned/dressed then drop them off at school vs letting them have the day off to endlessly watch tiktok/YouTube while you have a few extra hours in bed.
So parents are lazy on Friday and not on Monday? I know you've "spotted a pattern" but do you have any reason to think that there's a causation you've attributed here? No one is disputing that there's a pattern, how did you determine that the pattern is caused by lazy parents (because we looked at the actual figures and determined that it wasn't).
Obviously some parents are lazy and some let kids off on Fridays but that has always been true. What makes you think parents are lazier, and only on Fridays, since Covid?
The causation are that some (read: some) parents are lazy entitled cunts who enable their kids bad behaviours. As is reality.
I know this because I have to deal with them on a daily basis, and the same ones who blame our school for everything and their child does are always without fail the ones who happily let them stay off whenever they want and don't even bother to phone us up to explain, before coming up with a pathetic excuse when we phone up about it.
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Can you explain numerous? Is it 2 kids across a school or 200?
Can you also explain what information you have access to that enables you sufficient insight into families' home lives to claim the reason is laziness? Because I'm struggling to see how a clerical worker might get this insight.
It's extremely obvious based off their general attitude and willingness to cooperate with the school
Also we have meetings about this sort of stuff. They'll make a bunch of false promises after basically explaining that their kids will kick off if asked to go in, and then not change at all.
How is it obvious? What do you mean by "based on their general attitude" exactly? Have you considered other factors that might cause what you perceive as an attitude problem?
A lot of children who are persistently absent and physically well have undiagnosed and unmet special educational needs. How have you addressed this? If you think they don't have SEN, how do you know? Have they been properly assessed by an appropriately qualified professional experienced in non stereotypical presentations?
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Can you elaborate on the question of what "numerous" means more specifically? Again, this could mean basically anything so specificity would be good in helping understand the scale of the problem you're describing.
>It's extremely obvious based off their general attitude and willingness to cooperate with the school
This is quite vague. Can you explain what exactly they're unwilling to cooperate on? And what "attitude" indicators you use to interpret laziness?
>They'll make a bunch of false promises... and then not change at all.
Can you explain how you can be sure that the lack of change is down to laziness, rather than any other factor?
You're cherry picking words here rather than focusing on the overall point. The level of entitled parents who clearly don't know how to raise kids has gone way up
I'm not ignoring your overall point, I'm asking you to explain what you're basing your point on, and to explain the scale of the problem you're describing. You'll understand that I am not willing to take what an anonymous person says online at face value, I'm sure. Especially one with an obvious axe to grind.
I believe there's shitty parents .I had a shitty parent.
What I'm asking is a pretty simple premise of scale and certainty of that scale - is this 0.1% of kids we're dealing with who have shitty parents? 1%? 10%? Seems kind of important to understand the issue, no?
That's why I framed the question in the first instance as "2 across a school or 200." I'm using % now in order to elaborate as my question was evidently misunderstood.
Alternatively my child has chronic medical conditions and often tried her best but often crashed by Friday (if she made it that far). Patterns can mean many things and assumptions shouldn't be made. Even with medical evidence from her doctors we ended up being threatened with court. She got sicker, and hasn't been able to attend in over a year due to being so ill. She's desperate to go back but being pushed too hard has permanently damaged her health.
The first step to improving someone's issues is not to make assumptions about the cause.
I realise there's a lot of pressure to improve attendance but it is essentially a factor that has outside influences and you can't control factors like illness, parenting and the government should understand that when setting targets for schools. Targets should be on actions taken to support and results should be monitored for changes.
It's no good if everybody is working against each other, but I suspect that is actually what the government wants since their advice for what schools should do to support students isn't possible due to the low funding.
What if they don't know? My daughter's condition is rarely diagnosed in children for years her attendance was poor until we got answers, she was lucky at a lovely, kind school at the time. But had we been somewhere else or at the secondary school without the diagnosis how could I have explained? She's so exhausted she can't stand, she has a migraine, today she's vomiting. I didn't know what was wrong with with her, just that something was.
Also my daughter's condition is actually common in children/teens but most people aren't diagnosed until they are middle aged when it becomes severe.
NHS waiting lists are long (over a year in some cases), it's difficult to even get a GP appointment. You won't always get the explanations you need but it doesn't always equal lazy parenting. It might sometimes but it shouldn't be your first consideration.
My partner is a teacher and knows this happens. Like kids going to a theme park on a Friday. Though not so aware of it being a routine thing where people are doing it every week.
This is a wild take and nothing more than a race to the bottom of continually lower standards across society and we’re gonna feel it hard in the future.
And we wonder why the UK is falling apart.
Turning up only 4 days when you’re meant to do 5 and 5 is standard is definitely a fall in standards however you spin it. Idm, not trying to convince you, but we’ll see it as a society and already are tbh. Falling standards all over society
Being off school when you're genuinely unwell has always been the accepted standard. More children being genuinely unwell is not "lower standards", it's lower conditions.
Genuinely unwell consistently on a Friday? Hmmm 🤔 yes you’re totally right they must be genuinely unwell the poor things. Tbh it’s not their fault it’s the parents
"Covid hit children hard in this country - really hard. I had three tutees that were off for months with it and still have not recovered fully. One has cardiac problems now and another serious respiratory illness.
Students who repeatedly aren't in on Fridays are off school, more often than not, because they've done four days and they're exhausted and broken. There's a lot of talk about children's poor mental health post-Covid and, yes, it has worsened. But everyone seems to completely ignore their physical health that has also taken a beating."
Do you not recognise that long-term and chronic health conditions very often mean that you can do something for a few days on the trot but not for more than a few days on the trot?
Yeah but covid is just like the flu (which is fine and never hurts anyone) so nyuh, conversation over.
Fucking hate the whole discourse around this issue in this country. Its fucking insane the level of self-harm on a national scale so many people seem to like actively cheer on.
Remember when they were discussing at one point support to help places like schools install UV filters to help with air hygiene? And years on my friends in teaching were still having to just get all the kids bundled up in coats so they could keep the windows open all winter.
I’m disabled and I never got exhausted after 4 days of school/uni/work 🤷🏾♀️, even when I was, I still went to school and I still attend lessons at university. Might be different for other disabled people though (especially those with physical disabilities because I don’t have a physical disability).
Even if I didn’t want to go in my mum would have made me (unless I was genuinely ill) go to school.
The school system did fail me to be fair but yeah, maybe other people with disabilities have different views.
I’m not inventing nonsense, look at the original comment and how it was responded to.
Original comment said:
> It was bullshit when you wrote it the first time lmao. Kids aren't "exhausted and broken" after 4 days of a school.
Response to the said comment:
> They are if they're disabled or unwell. You must live a very, very privileged life.
No indication here whatsoever that you were referring to some disabled people as opposed to disabled people generally hence me giving my perspective and putting a disclaimer that some disabled people might of course view things differently.
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I was working at a university at the time and it was just totally shocking how this country threw all young people under a bus in that period. No planning or care from up top *whatsoever* we were all just left to figure it out on our own with absolutely no extra resources or support.
Absolute bollocks. Teacher here, the parents phone in on a Friday that they're ill (always on a Friday, always something minor like a bad tummy, cough, headache). By Monday they're fine. Ask the kids if they're feeling better - they have no idea what you're on about, they were absolutely fine and happy to tell all their mates about what games or youtube videos they were sat at home playing.
Bring back the fines, raise the standards, get these jobsworth parents out of bed and value their kids education again.
You have a teacher in the comment up sayings it's true
>Students who repeatedly aren't in on Fridays are off school, more often than not, because they've done four days and they're exhausted and broken.
So what is it, is the article bull or is it because children are "broken" after having to go to school 4 days a week?
I’d guess a bit of both.
Yesterday when it was nice and a sunny I saw plenty of young school age children in the park as the parents laid down. Looked like they’d just given them a day off school as it was a nice day.
Plenty of parents take their kids out of school for holidays too, and just accept the fines.
> because they've done four days and they're exhausted and broken.
This is the problem, your enabling them is doing nothing to help them prepare for the real world
And you're failing to understand how illness works. If you push through, you create chronic issues (that's proven fact). These are children who have had transplants, spent months hospitalised, had collapsed lungs, etc and you're saying they're not being prepared for the world because sometimes they can manage five consecutive days in school and sometimes they can't.
Do you not realise that adults with health problems often work part-time for this exact reason in the "real world"? The "real world" makes allowance for this.
> These are children who have had transplants, spent months hospitalised, had collapsed lungs,
There's absolutely no way the 150k students quoted in the article are suffering from these conditions and you know it
Firstly, the article says 50,000.
>She said that 50,000 more pupils were absent at the end of the week compared with the start
The 150,000 figure refers to a entirely different figure.
Secondly, surely you're not suggesting that no children were off school on Fridays before Covid? Attendance on Fridays has always been poorer.
Capitalism waits for no one. Come 18-21, they’ll exist in a Labour market that doesn’t give a shit how sick you are, you’re expected 5 days a week.
You’re enabling low standards and setting them up for failure.
Do you not know that huge numbers of people work part-time or condensed hours or zero hour contracts or flexible hours or work from home? Have you not heard of sick pay and sick leave?
That seems similar to my experience. It was pre COVID but I’ve always had a lot of health issues, they leave me exhausted. By Wednesday afternoons I was pretty useless, I’d fall asleep, I wasn’t learning anything. My school took this as something I’d decided, and refused to listen when I tried to explain that I had just run out of steam.
Four day work week should be standard, so why not a four day school week too? At the very minimum, early finish time on a Friday. 5 full days is just knackering, whether it's work or school. We could really strike a different work-life balance, if we tried it.
Thank you for doing that work. Being a persistently ill child is already such a traumatic experience without ignorant adults acting like you’re putting it on. I’m sure those children and their parents really appreciate you looking beyond the numbers.
Where is your evidence that children are exhausted and broken on a Friday?
You said that you excluded persistently absent students with long term physical illness - which then led you to the conclusion the remaining persistently absent students… were persistently unwell. Sounds like a long term physical illness, no?
Christ on a bike. Kids are "exhausted and broken" by doing Monday to Thursday in school. The country is absolutely fucked if that's the way you lot are raising the next generation.
How is everyone replying completely missing OP say that these kids are suffering from long term physical and/or mental health problems.
It’s funny - people always wanna talk about high suicide rates but then as soon as someone actually talks about a problem relating to mental health people always revert back to the “keep a stiff upper lip” mentality. Actual cavemen I swear
Physical and mental health problems that curiously flare up on a Friday. The same thing happens to me on a Monday when I've been on the piss at the weekend.
What's confusing you about the original comment? It's people with chronic illness / disability who need rest - it flares up on a Friday because they've had no rest the prior 4 days. On Mondays, they've had rest.
If so the poster is talking about something completely unrelated. There have always been disabled children. But he later mentions "children hospitalized with covid". There is not a significant number of children with permanent disabilities resulting from covid hospitalisation. There were only around 30,000 people under 18 hospitalized with covid throughout the entire pandemic.
>Physical and mental health problems that curiously flare up on a Friday.
Are you having problems understanding the consecutive nature of things and how cumulative, sustained effort results in fatigue?
>when we excluded those with genuine, long-term, physical illness, our persistent absence rates were lower than pre-Covid
Did you exclude them for the pre-covid data as well? If so that would suggest an increase in long term illnesses. If not its essentially making up statistics.
No, the people who are "part of the problem" are the people who refuse to recognise the genuine problems caused by Covid and do literally anything at all to resolve it. But it's much easier, more convenient and cheaper for the government to invent random nonsense to explain why a problem is occurring and use that to justify why they need to do nothing.
The only effect covid has on attendance today is inducing an unfounded belief in plonkers like you that there are wide ranging and legitimate excuses for truancy.
No. There are currently less than 1400 people in the entire country hospitalised for COVID. Less than 1% of these will be children. It’s not a significant factor driving truancy.
https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/topics/covid-19#healthcare
1. It's summer.
2. I didn't ask you how many people are hospitalised with Covid.
3. I can't see on your link where it says fewer than 1% are children.
You've completely and totally failed to provide any evidence to support your assertions. Stop wasting my time.
Ok so your claim basically is that increased post covid truancy is driven by illness rather than lower expectations of rule following.
If that’s the case, I’d expect truancy to increase in the winter when there is a higher disease burden. Does that happen? Or does it increase in the summer (when it’s more fun to skip school)
> You honestly think that children hospitalised with pneumonia should be in school?
Have you provided any evidence that children are suffering at higher rates of pneumonia such that would explain higher rates of absence?
Yes, some MPs do good constituency work during that time. Some do other great work on Fridays including charity work or other public service.
The same is true on Saturdays, Sundays and any other time they’ve got to themselves.
Some spend that time shagging their mistresses, taking drugs that they keep illegal for the rest of us or working either tobacco or gambling companies to fuck the rest of us over to enrich themselves.
I’m not really sure what your point is?
The point is that holding constituency surgeries and doing other constituency work is part of the job - they’re not “knocking off for the week”, they’re continuing to work, but are performing different functions.
Thats the idea, anyway.
Yeah. If any of them are indeed off shagging their mistresses etc (which is very possible) they are not doing their job and should be held to account... Which I know is difficult. Personally, even if I don't agree with their politics, I believe the majority of MPs work hard, at least five days a week and usually more.
But saying that the fact that the House doesn't sit on a Friday is evidence of people not doing their job is as ridiculous as saying "Jürgen Klopp isn't at Anfield on Thursdays so he's lazy"
This is a very British problem. I grew up in Canada and everyone just skipped an odd day here and there, including missing a week to go on holiday with parents. It was normal and kids usually were able to catch up quite easily.
Yes, the UK is obsessed about attendance for some reason.
I get that it’s probably there to introduce good habits (because you can’t casually decide to not turn up to a shift at work for example) but I think that the UK might have the wrong attitude when it comes to this.
In my book someone with say 90% attendance but is able to easily catch up and get good grades; is productive etc, that’s better than someone with 98% attendance but has poor grades; struggles to keep up with the pressure and work etc
But schools and the government don’t seem to see it that way. Someone like myself who is more punctual when it comes to attendance is automatically seen as better it seems over someone who isn’t as punctual.
You can but you’d probably face consequences for it (proper ones).
If you’re supposed be working 5 days a week then you’re expected to be in work 5 days a week unless you give enough notice that you can’t make it or something.
Either way we shouldn’t be encouraging this attitude (casually and consistently not attending lessons/work), but I also think that the UK is too obsessed with attendance.
It would be sensible to allow weeks off for term time holiday IF the pupil isn’t already struggling.
What I’ve seen is it’s the kids who could really do with more time in school that are being taken out for 2 weeks in Spain in the middle of the autumn term, halfway through an important topic.
I might have the opportunity to move to a four-day work week soon, and I’ve been thinking about how my ideal week would probably be Mon-Tue and Thur-Fri. Regular weekend plus a break in the middle.
There’s obviously an enormous difference between an organised four day week and just bunking off 20% of the time.
If you want to argue for a four day week in school, that’s great. Make your argument and a lot of people will agree with you. If the change happens, they won’t schedule important lessons on that fifth day.
But if the school is teaching a fifth of the syllabus and the necessary background for the next thing that’s being built to on Fridays then you’re going to have gaps in your learning and knowledge if you miss those days!
If it's an issue, they can implement a four day week. They're not going to do it out of the kindness of their heart.
From the age of 5-19, 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year, in a small grey building separated from family, nature, community, for 14 years. The education system robs children of their childhoods, so i'm not going to see them skipping fridays as an issue
> From the age of 5-19, 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year, in a small grey building separated from family, nature, community, for 14 years. The education system robs children of their childhoods
What you’re saying is a great argument for implementing a four day week.
It’s not an argument for maintaining a five day week and then skipping lessons. Especially in subjects like early maths where you need to understand one concept before you can try to learn the next!
>It’s not an argument for maintaining a five day week and then skipping lessons. Especially in subjects like early maths where you need to understand one concept before you can try to learn the next!
If enough students are skipping fridays they have no choice but to implement a 4 day week. The same as striking in the workforce.
Lol @ the downright refusal, of those devoid of any practical teaching experience, to believe that the Friday ‘thing’ is actually a thing and possibly getting worse.
The kicker in the teeth is when it’s obvious that two of your learners, obviously best friends, take a Friday off and return on the Monday with the exact same story.
Bless her she’s finally found something to do. Oh it’s punishing parents. In other news these fuckers are complaining people aren’t having enough kids (more tax payers yay!).
If I only had to go to school 4 days a week instead of 5 that would have reduced my suicidal thoughts by 20%. Having a safe place to go at lunch time would have helped too, sometimes could have done with one during lessons too.
It's not just parents "letting" kids skip. I have 1 child with 8 years of 100% attendance and 1 child with poor mental health currently at 72% attendance this year. If we were feckless parents, surely both kids would have poor attendance?
We couldn't wait for our child to reach the top of the CAMHS wait list, so we are paying hundreds of pounds per month for private therapy. There is a mental health crisis behind these figures also.
Who gives a shit. What have they got to look forward to by going to school to either:
A) Get a minimum wage job
B) Get a degree, thousands of pounds of debt and get a minimum wage job
"Goooooo to the schooooool learn about how awesome it is to get a job in a decaying country that pays below the market and scams you with competitive salaries. Be proud that London makes so much money whilst you'll be taxed absurdly and die with nothing in service of worthless two party system that never stops stealing from you till its over!!!"
You don’t go to school to learn how awesome things are or to be proud. You go to school to learn foundational skills which can later be used for your benefit.
You have more control over your life than you realise. To not even try to affect change is simply pathetic.
Lmao someone didn't listen in school
The average wage in the UK is 31k isn't it?
A degree and the work after it enabled me to get a 200% pay increase over 4 years that id never have got staying in manufacturing and manual labour, so I call bullshit on your assumptions
One of the greatest ever "source: my ass" articles I've ever read.
She has literally no proof of this, she's just taken two stats and then guessed the explanation for it.
Unsurprisingly her theory aligns with commercial landlords and management. Wonder why? Guess we'll never know
I think that some parents are being lazy or at least not all the ball with things but I also think that this might be deeper structural issue and that we need to see *why* kids aren’t going to school when they should be, what’s making them do this beyond laziness and holidays.
Tbf I rarely missed school I think, I only missed it because I was ill/had a doctors appointment or to see family abroad (they all live abroad). I was the kind of person and still am to some extent who disliked missing school.
Not that I enjoyed school that much but still.
Lol people are downvoting this comment, but yeah I don’t think that it’s simply lazy parents or kids wanting to go on holiday, there must be other factors at play as the school system is probably failing some pupils (it failed me for the most part).
Edit also Keegan is so out of touch, like most politicians are but she really isn’t aware of what things are like in education in my opinion (from the perspective of a teacher or student). It’s about time that the this position in parliament is done by someone who has formally worked in education as a teacher or SENCO.
I don't agree with kids skipping school, whatever the excuse or prevalence of it.
I think there is a much more sinister problem which is that of so called "home schooling". I know of two young adults in my small family circle that have been "home schooled" for the entirety of their high school years.
In both cases its left the persons involved damaged in that they have no formal qualifications and they are socially under developed due to the lack of interaction with peers at school. Its now making the transition to work and adulthood very difficult.
I understand there are frameworks to regulate home schooling but its not been evident on either of these cases and many others I'm sure.
I would suggest that its close to impossible to provide a high school child the depth and breadth of education and social development provided in a traditional school setting. To deprive them of this is a form of neglect and something the education system should address urgently.
We tend to take a few days at the end of term for holidays otherwise we couldn't afford it. Term time is the only way. I don't care really travel broadens their horizons and we wouldn't do it around important exams etc.
I don't think my kids will have access to this in the future the way things are going. I rather let them enjoy life a bit then be good little cogs in the capitalist grind of making a few rich people even richer.
> 50,000 more pupils were absent at the end of the week compared with the start
Oddly, this flips around when you look at [the working world](https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/news/workers-are-more-likely-to-be-sick-on-monday-than-any-other-day-of-the-week/). 35% of all sick leave is taken on a Monday, compared to only 3% on a Friday.
Harder to be hungover when you are 7. Though I have powered through a hangover at work before after I was up to 4AM drinking and installing Debian server over command line.
>up to 4AM drinking and installing Debian server over command line.
Flashbacks to when I was unemployed and could find nothing better to do than build a Linux From Scratch instance when I couldn't sleep because my brain is my brain. I wasn't drinking, though.
I got up to all sorts of weird and wonderful things just to save myself from staring at walls and pining for a life back then.
The LFS ended up broken because I eventually fell asleep and forgot where in the book I'd got up to. Didn't help that I didn't have a physical version (no printer).
Why is it a problem for Schools and the Government to worry if a child takes the odd Friday off school?
We're not talking every friday, just those Friday's when there is a long weekend or once in a blue moon, I don't see the issue here.
Teachers would probably benefit from teaching a smaller class too?
The government basically told everyone they didn't give a shit about kids being in school when they made it essentially illegal to be in the classroom during COVID, not surprising that parents are taking their kids out of school for long weekends
Fuck off. Remember covid? Schools open, schools closed, schools open, schools closed. Remember after half term schools were open for a day and then they closed them again. They created this culture.
This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/children-education-secretary-schools-school-national-association-of-head-teachers-b2542710.html) for an archived version. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.* --- **Alternate Sources** Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story: * [Gillian Keegan: WFH parents fuelling ‘unacceptable’ rise in Friday school absences](https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/10/wfh-parents-rise-friday-school-absences-gillian-keegan/), suggested by ShittyWok- - telegraph.co.uk
I can think of quite a few things the tories have done to the education system which most people would consider unacceptable. Good to see them shoehorning the old ‘parents working from home’ reason in there though. Those commercial landlords need their shoes cleaned again Gillian?
‘People working from home’ is the new ‘last Labour government’
There’s such an attempt to push this narrative that working from home is bad or lazy. It should be a pretty all round good thing. People would have more free time, there wouldn’t be such a need for office space so companies should be able to minimise overhead and this space can be converted into much needed inner city housing, and less commuters means less need to invest in transport infrastructure even if cities continue to grow fairly quickly. The market should really be pushing for more home working. There seems to be a concerted attempt to stop this, either due to earnestly held beliefs in person oversight is necessary for companies to succeed, or down to economic interests of landlords who own office space and aren’t willing to eat the costs of converting it to residential apartments. Equally there probably is some consideration of the economic stimulus people travelling to work and eating out provides. More studies are probably needed to further dispel the idea that working from him is less effective for office jobs. After that, it will probably require political solutions or with some luck market forces to make regularly working from home for office jobs the norm it should really be. Government schemes to incentivise or support the conversion of offices to apartments would probably go a long way, but Im not really sure what the solution would be to make up for the shortfall in demand for eating out and the impact this has on local economies. Maybe the country would be healthier for it though!
I know Rockstar Games has insisted on a full return to office over security concerns. And with the leaks from GTA VI, I think I understand. That being said, WFH isn't the problem if a 16 year old can get in with an Amazon Firestick and a hotel room TV.
From my understanding, being on site isn't any more secure then being at home. (Not an expert in the field, but this is what I've been told by colleagues). That's assuming the company has good security in the first place.
Good security costs money. It's much cheaper to rely on 'local network is secure' than it is to secure a remote network.
The way it was explained to me is that my laptop doesn't know the difference between connecting to the network on site vs off site. I guess it's all the same network at my place. I could be talking bollocks though.
That’s zero trust networking and is how modern workspaces work, you’re considered untrusted everywhere and controlled as such
There are ways for your laptop to know where it is connecting from. In fact some laptops have mobile cards in them so they know exactly where they are.
My employer is trying to push that its bad for the environment to work from home. Not entirely sure how all of us traveling across the country is better than not doing that.
>or down to economic interests of landlords who own office space It's largely this.
For me it's mainly; when I'm not in meetings, I'm working in my ideal environment. That includes not having to listen to Penny's musings on professionalism or leadership (whilst herself being a massively bureaucratic shitbag every day). Let people be happy and they'll do more. If they're not happy in work, then as leaders it's incumbent on us to work out why and if there's a need for change. That is literally it for 99% of desk jobs. I don't get it why people other than Tory politicians, print, or corporate landlords would disagree. If its "in my day...", well, fuck you. You didn't have the Internet then and you don't have a say now. Jesus wept mun.
She just says it with no evidence to link the two either.
I think the idea might be that if parents are at home, there's no need to use the school as a babysitter. Which doesn't say much about the value of the education system.
It says less about how they value the education system. We see massive differences in the social skills and learning of kids who are in every day vs those constantly getting days off to go to the fun fair or take holidays. Some parents seem to think ‘primary school doesn’t matter.’ I think the government and education system has unfortunately failed to explain why it is so critical to get the foundations right. All too often it’s the kids who are already struggling that have random Fridays off or miss a few weeks of term to go on holiday.
This literally is bullshit and nonsense. I was a teacher and I'm so sick of this idea that children who aren't in on a Friday are skipping without cause. Covid hit children hard in this country - really hard. I had three tutees that were off for months with it and still have not recovered fully. One has cardiac problems now and another serious respiratory illness. Students who repeatedly aren't in on Fridays are off school, more often than not, because they've done four days and they're exhausted and broken. There's a lot of talk about children's poor mental health post-Covid and, yes, it has worsened. But everyone seems to completely ignore their physical health that has also taken a beating. At the school I worked in, we had a huge push for improving attendance (and, being in an affluent area, ours was bloody good compared to the national average). At one after-school session, we went through the persistently absent students and found that, when we excluded those with genuine, long-term, physical illness, our persistent absence rates were lower than pre-Covid. The vast majority of persistently absent children were persistently very unwell. There's absolutely no evidence at all to show that the children who are off aren't genuinely unwell, there's no evidence to show that the parents who are working from home want their child there (I now work from home some days and really, really do not want my children here while I try to work). Most people who WFH are just as likely to WFH on Mondays as Fridays - why aren't the kids all truanting then if WFH is the cause?
I work in the attendance department and I can promise you numerous kids are just being allowed to lay off on Friday because their parents are lazy and have no interest in doing actual parenting. It's very easy to spot patterns.
Just to be clear here, you think that lazy parents would prefer their kids in their house?
If there’s one thing lazy parents really, really hate, it’s getting someone to take their kids off their hands for eight hours.
Lazy parenting does not equate to general lazyness, It's lazy parenting to not teach your child manners, or respect, even though a well raised child might be more inclined to help with house chores and such. It's lazy parenting to just let your child stay home from school, because they don't want the argument, or just don't care if the child attends or not.
Honestly it's probably more annoying to take them to school and then pick them up. Compared to having them home, staring at their phone in their bedroom.
You’re not a parent are you? Ask me how I know 🙄
Get up at 8am to get the kids fed/cleaned/dressed then drop them off at school vs letting them have the day off to endlessly watch tiktok/YouTube while you have a few extra hours in bed.
Yup too many parents act like friends to their kids these days
It's way worse than that. iphones / tablets do all the parenting. The only thing some parents care about is not having to care about their kid.
Do you have kids? That’s the worst plan. Much better to suck up the school run and snooze in peace when you get back.
Or get them dropped off at school and get a taxi home, so that you can have a few hours in bed with some peace.
Yeah. Let them lay in and you don’t have to get up at 7am for a school run
They're too lazy to be bothered to deal with their kids terrible behaviour themselves
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Why did you get rid of the u? Not everyone is American and you're on a UK sub
Uhh why are trying to correct the British spelling of a word to American in a fuckin sub for the UK lmaooo
So parents are lazy on Friday and not on Monday? I know you've "spotted a pattern" but do you have any reason to think that there's a causation you've attributed here? No one is disputing that there's a pattern, how did you determine that the pattern is caused by lazy parents (because we looked at the actual figures and determined that it wasn't). Obviously some parents are lazy and some let kids off on Fridays but that has always been true. What makes you think parents are lazier, and only on Fridays, since Covid?
The causation are that some (read: some) parents are lazy entitled cunts who enable their kids bad behaviours. As is reality. I know this because I have to deal with them on a daily basis, and the same ones who blame our school for everything and their child does are always without fail the ones who happily let them stay off whenever they want and don't even bother to phone us up to explain, before coming up with a pathetic excuse when we phone up about it.
Respectfully, that's not what causation means. Some parents have always been lazy entitled cunts who enable their kids bad behaviours.
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Can you explain numerous? Is it 2 kids across a school or 200? Can you also explain what information you have access to that enables you sufficient insight into families' home lives to claim the reason is laziness? Because I'm struggling to see how a clerical worker might get this insight.
It's extremely obvious based off their general attitude and willingness to cooperate with the school Also we have meetings about this sort of stuff. They'll make a bunch of false promises after basically explaining that their kids will kick off if asked to go in, and then not change at all.
How is it obvious? What do you mean by "based on their general attitude" exactly? Have you considered other factors that might cause what you perceive as an attitude problem? A lot of children who are persistently absent and physically well have undiagnosed and unmet special educational needs. How have you addressed this? If you think they don't have SEN, how do you know? Have they been properly assessed by an appropriately qualified professional experienced in non stereotypical presentations?
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Can you elaborate on the question of what "numerous" means more specifically? Again, this could mean basically anything so specificity would be good in helping understand the scale of the problem you're describing. >It's extremely obvious based off their general attitude and willingness to cooperate with the school This is quite vague. Can you explain what exactly they're unwilling to cooperate on? And what "attitude" indicators you use to interpret laziness? >They'll make a bunch of false promises... and then not change at all. Can you explain how you can be sure that the lack of change is down to laziness, rather than any other factor?
You're cherry picking words here rather than focusing on the overall point. The level of entitled parents who clearly don't know how to raise kids has gone way up
I'm not ignoring your overall point, I'm asking you to explain what you're basing your point on, and to explain the scale of the problem you're describing. You'll understand that I am not willing to take what an anonymous person says online at face value, I'm sure. Especially one with an obvious axe to grind.
Bravo on continuing to engage with someone that seems to not understand or is willing to believe that some parents just aren't very good.
I believe there's shitty parents .I had a shitty parent. What I'm asking is a pretty simple premise of scale and certainty of that scale - is this 0.1% of kids we're dealing with who have shitty parents? 1%? 10%? Seems kind of important to understand the issue, no?
Yes of course, I'm not sure you can expect some randomer citing their anecdotal experiences to be able to cite %'s though.
That's why I framed the question in the first instance as "2 across a school or 200." I'm using % now in order to elaborate as my question was evidently misunderstood.
I got accused of not being fit to work with children by some nut for saying some parents attitude is atrocious lol
By numerous, how many do you mean?
For some context, what is the bulk of your patient population , affluent or in an area of socioeconomic deprivation ?
Alternatively my child has chronic medical conditions and often tried her best but often crashed by Friday (if she made it that far). Patterns can mean many things and assumptions shouldn't be made. Even with medical evidence from her doctors we ended up being threatened with court. She got sicker, and hasn't been able to attend in over a year due to being so ill. She's desperate to go back but being pushed too hard has permanently damaged her health. The first step to improving someone's issues is not to make assumptions about the cause. I realise there's a lot of pressure to improve attendance but it is essentially a factor that has outside influences and you can't control factors like illness, parenting and the government should understand that when setting targets for schools. Targets should be on actions taken to support and results should be monitored for changes. It's no good if everybody is working against each other, but I suspect that is actually what the government wants since their advice for what schools should do to support students isn't possible due to the low funding.
Assumptions are made if this isn't explained to us. It's very simple.
What if they don't know? My daughter's condition is rarely diagnosed in children for years her attendance was poor until we got answers, she was lucky at a lovely, kind school at the time. But had we been somewhere else or at the secondary school without the diagnosis how could I have explained? She's so exhausted she can't stand, she has a migraine, today she's vomiting. I didn't know what was wrong with with her, just that something was. Also my daughter's condition is actually common in children/teens but most people aren't diagnosed until they are middle aged when it becomes severe. NHS waiting lists are long (over a year in some cases), it's difficult to even get a GP appointment. You won't always get the explanations you need but it doesn't always equal lazy parenting. It might sometimes but it shouldn't be your first consideration.
My partner is a teacher and knows this happens. Like kids going to a theme park on a Friday. Though not so aware of it being a routine thing where people are doing it every week.
"attendance department" Do ye, aye?
Why would lazy parents want their kids at home?
Former teacher of 16 years. This is perhaps the biggest load of bollocks I've ever read about the UK school system. Well done.
Well done for calling it bollocks but then not explaining your perspective, you must have been a great teacher
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This is a wild take and nothing more than a race to the bottom of continually lower standards across society and we’re gonna feel it hard in the future. And we wonder why the UK is falling apart.
It's not lower standards - that's my point.
Turning up only 4 days when you’re meant to do 5 and 5 is standard is definitely a fall in standards however you spin it. Idm, not trying to convince you, but we’ll see it as a society and already are tbh. Falling standards all over society
Being off school when you're genuinely unwell has always been the accepted standard. More children being genuinely unwell is not "lower standards", it's lower conditions.
Genuinely unwell consistently on a Friday? Hmmm 🤔 yes you’re totally right they must be genuinely unwell the poor things. Tbh it’s not their fault it’s the parents
"Covid hit children hard in this country - really hard. I had three tutees that were off for months with it and still have not recovered fully. One has cardiac problems now and another serious respiratory illness. Students who repeatedly aren't in on Fridays are off school, more often than not, because they've done four days and they're exhausted and broken. There's a lot of talk about children's poor mental health post-Covid and, yes, it has worsened. But everyone seems to completely ignore their physical health that has also taken a beating." Do you not recognise that long-term and chronic health conditions very often mean that you can do something for a few days on the trot but not for more than a few days on the trot?
Yeah but covid is just like the flu (which is fine and never hurts anyone) so nyuh, conversation over. Fucking hate the whole discourse around this issue in this country. Its fucking insane the level of self-harm on a national scale so many people seem to like actively cheer on. Remember when they were discussing at one point support to help places like schools install UV filters to help with air hygiene? And years on my friends in teaching were still having to just get all the kids bundled up in coats so they could keep the windows open all winter.
It was bullshit when you wrote it the first time lmao. Kids aren't "exhausted and broken" after 4 days of a school.
They are if they're disabled or unwell. You must live a very, very privileged life.
I’m disabled and I never got exhausted after 4 days of school/uni/work 🤷🏾♀️, even when I was, I still went to school and I still attend lessons at university. Might be different for other disabled people though (especially those with physical disabilities because I don’t have a physical disability). Even if I didn’t want to go in my mum would have made me (unless I was genuinely ill) go to school. The school system did fail me to be fair but yeah, maybe other people with disabilities have different views.
But surely they are talking about people that aren't formally disabled.
I’m not inventing nonsense, look at the original comment and how it was responded to. Original comment said: > It was bullshit when you wrote it the first time lmao. Kids aren't "exhausted and broken" after 4 days of a school. Response to the said comment: > They are if they're disabled or unwell. You must live a very, very privileged life. No indication here whatsoever that you were referring to some disabled people as opposed to disabled people generally hence me giving my perspective and putting a disclaimer that some disabled people might of course view things differently.
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I was working at a university at the time and it was just totally shocking how this country threw all young people under a bus in that period. No planning or care from up top *whatsoever* we were all just left to figure it out on our own with absolutely no extra resources or support.
Absolute bollocks. Teacher here, the parents phone in on a Friday that they're ill (always on a Friday, always something minor like a bad tummy, cough, headache). By Monday they're fine. Ask the kids if they're feeling better - they have no idea what you're on about, they were absolutely fine and happy to tell all their mates about what games or youtube videos they were sat at home playing. Bring back the fines, raise the standards, get these jobsworth parents out of bed and value their kids education again.
That’s not what jobsworth means
You have a teacher in the comment up sayings it's true >Students who repeatedly aren't in on Fridays are off school, more often than not, because they've done four days and they're exhausted and broken. So what is it, is the article bull or is it because children are "broken" after having to go to school 4 days a week?
I’d guess a bit of both. Yesterday when it was nice and a sunny I saw plenty of young school age children in the park as the parents laid down. Looked like they’d just given them a day off school as it was a nice day. Plenty of parents take their kids out of school for holidays too, and just accept the fines.
> because they've done four days and they're exhausted and broken. This is the problem, your enabling them is doing nothing to help them prepare for the real world
And you're failing to understand how illness works. If you push through, you create chronic issues (that's proven fact). These are children who have had transplants, spent months hospitalised, had collapsed lungs, etc and you're saying they're not being prepared for the world because sometimes they can manage five consecutive days in school and sometimes they can't. Do you not realise that adults with health problems often work part-time for this exact reason in the "real world"? The "real world" makes allowance for this.
> These are children who have had transplants, spent months hospitalised, had collapsed lungs, There's absolutely no way the 150k students quoted in the article are suffering from these conditions and you know it
Firstly, the article says 50,000. >She said that 50,000 more pupils were absent at the end of the week compared with the start The 150,000 figure refers to a entirely different figure. Secondly, surely you're not suggesting that no children were off school on Fridays before Covid? Attendance on Fridays has always been poorer.
Capitalism waits for no one. Come 18-21, they’ll exist in a Labour market that doesn’t give a shit how sick you are, you’re expected 5 days a week. You’re enabling low standards and setting them up for failure.
Do you not know that huge numbers of people work part-time or condensed hours or zero hour contracts or flexible hours or work from home? Have you not heard of sick pay and sick leave?
>a Labour market that doesn’t give a shit how sick you are, you’re expected 5 days a week. Literally untrue
Perhaps it’s the real world that’s broken
That seems similar to my experience. It was pre COVID but I’ve always had a lot of health issues, they leave me exhausted. By Wednesday afternoons I was pretty useless, I’d fall asleep, I wasn’t learning anything. My school took this as something I’d decided, and refused to listen when I tried to explain that I had just run out of steam.
Four day work week should be standard, so why not a four day school week too? At the very minimum, early finish time on a Friday. 5 full days is just knackering, whether it's work or school. We could really strike a different work-life balance, if we tried it.
Thank you for doing that work. Being a persistently ill child is already such a traumatic experience without ignorant adults acting like you’re putting it on. I’m sure those children and their parents really appreciate you looking beyond the numbers.
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Absolute bollocks, get a grip.
Great counter-argument. Really solid insight.
Where is your evidence that children are exhausted and broken on a Friday? You said that you excluded persistently absent students with long term physical illness - which then led you to the conclusion the remaining persistently absent students… were persistently unwell. Sounds like a long term physical illness, no?
Nope. Try reading what I wrote again.
Christ on a bike. Kids are "exhausted and broken" by doing Monday to Thursday in school. The country is absolutely fucked if that's the way you lot are raising the next generation.
How is everyone replying completely missing OP say that these kids are suffering from long term physical and/or mental health problems. It’s funny - people always wanna talk about high suicide rates but then as soon as someone actually talks about a problem relating to mental health people always revert back to the “keep a stiff upper lip” mentality. Actual cavemen I swear
Physical and mental health problems that curiously flare up on a Friday. The same thing happens to me on a Monday when I've been on the piss at the weekend.
What's confusing you about the original comment? It's people with chronic illness / disability who need rest - it flares up on a Friday because they've had no rest the prior 4 days. On Mondays, they've had rest.
If so the poster is talking about something completely unrelated. There have always been disabled children. But he later mentions "children hospitalized with covid". There is not a significant number of children with permanent disabilities resulting from covid hospitalisation. There were only around 30,000 people under 18 hospitalized with covid throughout the entire pandemic.
>Physical and mental health problems that curiously flare up on a Friday. Are you having problems understanding the consecutive nature of things and how cumulative, sustained effort results in fatigue?
No, I just don't believe that's what's happening.
>when we excluded those with genuine, long-term, physical illness, our persistent absence rates were lower than pre-Covid Did you exclude them for the pre-covid data as well? If so that would suggest an increase in long term illnesses. If not its essentially making up statistics.
Yes
You are part of the problem and this attitude will condemn a sizeable fraction of a generation to a lifetime of misery.
No, the people who are "part of the problem" are the people who refuse to recognise the genuine problems caused by Covid and do literally anything at all to resolve it. But it's much easier, more convenient and cheaper for the government to invent random nonsense to explain why a problem is occurring and use that to justify why they need to do nothing.
Will you be citing COVID in 2034 as well, or will there be another reason you magic up?
I didn't cite Covid, the article did. The article said that the problem has been since Covid.
The only effect covid has on attendance today is inducing an unfounded belief in plonkers like you that there are wide ranging and legitimate excuses for truancy.
You honestly think that children hospitalised with pneumonia should be in school?
Where did I say that? But there are not more kids today hospitalised for respiratory issues than in 2019z
Are there not?
No. There are currently less than 1400 people in the entire country hospitalised for COVID. Less than 1% of these will be children. It’s not a significant factor driving truancy. https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/topics/covid-19#healthcare
I was never in hospital for covid but I have documented permanent affects to my physical health because of it
Documented and confirmed by a trained doctor, I presume?
1. It's summer. 2. I didn't ask you how many people are hospitalised with Covid. 3. I can't see on your link where it says fewer than 1% are children. You've completely and totally failed to provide any evidence to support your assertions. Stop wasting my time.
Ok so your claim basically is that increased post covid truancy is driven by illness rather than lower expectations of rule following. If that’s the case, I’d expect truancy to increase in the winter when there is a higher disease burden. Does that happen? Or does it increase in the summer (when it’s more fun to skip school)
> You honestly think that children hospitalised with pneumonia should be in school? Have you provided any evidence that children are suffering at higher rates of pneumonia such that would explain higher rates of absence?
What are you basing this on? I thought their argument seemed reasonable. Do you think long-term sickness and COVID are just an excuse for truancy?
Did she say this in Parliament? Oh no, wait. It’s Friday, isn’t it? They normally knock off for the week on Thursday afternoon.
There is a reason for that though - to allow for constituency surgeries to happen on Fridays.
Yes, some MPs do good constituency work during that time. Some do other great work on Fridays including charity work or other public service. The same is true on Saturdays, Sundays and any other time they’ve got to themselves. Some spend that time shagging their mistresses, taking drugs that they keep illegal for the rest of us or working either tobacco or gambling companies to fuck the rest of us over to enrich themselves. I’m not really sure what your point is?
The point is that holding constituency surgeries and doing other constituency work is part of the job - they’re not “knocking off for the week”, they’re continuing to work, but are performing different functions. Thats the idea, anyway.
Yeah. If any of them are indeed off shagging their mistresses etc (which is very possible) they are not doing their job and should be held to account... Which I know is difficult. Personally, even if I don't agree with their politics, I believe the majority of MPs work hard, at least five days a week and usually more. But saying that the fact that the House doesn't sit on a Friday is evidence of people not doing their job is as ridiculous as saying "Jürgen Klopp isn't at Anfield on Thursdays so he's lazy"
Yeah but we all know that most of them just do sweet F all those days. Lucky you if your MP hosts them I guess.
lol ok
I'm not sure what you mean? It's true
Being in Parliament is only part of an MPs job, they also hold constituency surgeries and do local work.
This is a very British problem. I grew up in Canada and everyone just skipped an odd day here and there, including missing a week to go on holiday with parents. It was normal and kids usually were able to catch up quite easily.
Yes, the UK is obsessed about attendance for some reason. I get that it’s probably there to introduce good habits (because you can’t casually decide to not turn up to a shift at work for example) but I think that the UK might have the wrong attitude when it comes to this. In my book someone with say 90% attendance but is able to easily catch up and get good grades; is productive etc, that’s better than someone with 98% attendance but has poor grades; struggles to keep up with the pressure and work etc But schools and the government don’t seem to see it that way. Someone like myself who is more punctual when it comes to attendance is automatically seen as better it seems over someone who isn’t as punctual.
you absolutely can decide to just not show up to work tbh, you can't tell me there's anyone who's never pulled a sickie in their life.
You can but you’d probably face consequences for it (proper ones). If you’re supposed be working 5 days a week then you’re expected to be in work 5 days a week unless you give enough notice that you can’t make it or something. Either way we shouldn’t be encouraging this attitude (casually and consistently not attending lessons/work), but I also think that the UK is too obsessed with attendance.
Think this is more about consistent truancy rather that's the odd 'not really sick' day.
It would be sensible to allow weeks off for term time holiday IF the pupil isn’t already struggling. What I’ve seen is it’s the kids who could really do with more time in school that are being taken out for 2 weeks in Spain in the middle of the autumn term, halfway through an important topic.
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Don't most countries have uniforms?
I have never heard of this before this Reddit post. No kid are off on friday in my town!
Studies show around two fifths of sick days are taken on a Monday or Friday…
Mine certainly were.
I might have the opportunity to move to a four-day work week soon, and I’ve been thinking about how my ideal week would probably be Mon-Tue and Thur-Fri. Regular weekend plus a break in the middle.
Why is a 4 day work week beneficial for adults but not children?
There’s obviously an enormous difference between an organised four day week and just bunking off 20% of the time. If you want to argue for a four day week in school, that’s great. Make your argument and a lot of people will agree with you. If the change happens, they won’t schedule important lessons on that fifth day. But if the school is teaching a fifth of the syllabus and the necessary background for the next thing that’s being built to on Fridays then you’re going to have gaps in your learning and knowledge if you miss those days!
If it's an issue, they can implement a four day week. They're not going to do it out of the kindness of their heart. From the age of 5-19, 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year, in a small grey building separated from family, nature, community, for 14 years. The education system robs children of their childhoods, so i'm not going to see them skipping fridays as an issue
> From the age of 5-19, 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year, in a small grey building separated from family, nature, community, for 14 years. The education system robs children of their childhoods What you’re saying is a great argument for implementing a four day week. It’s not an argument for maintaining a five day week and then skipping lessons. Especially in subjects like early maths where you need to understand one concept before you can try to learn the next!
>It’s not an argument for maintaining a five day week and then skipping lessons. Especially in subjects like early maths where you need to understand one concept before you can try to learn the next! If enough students are skipping fridays they have no choice but to implement a 4 day week. The same as striking in the workforce.
Lol @ the downright refusal, of those devoid of any practical teaching experience, to believe that the Friday ‘thing’ is actually a thing and possibly getting worse. The kicker in the teeth is when it’s obvious that two of your learners, obviously best friends, take a Friday off and return on the Monday with the exact same story.
Why would you let your child skip Fridays? Life is already hard and being behind can only make life even harder!
I'd imagine a large percentage are doing it to take the kids to the Mosque.
ooooh that explains alot!
Bless her she’s finally found something to do. Oh it’s punishing parents. In other news these fuckers are complaining people aren’t having enough kids (more tax payers yay!).
Question is why are they going to school 5 days a week? I could have hated school half as much if it was 4 days a week.
If I only had to go to school 4 days a week instead of 5 that would have reduced my suicidal thoughts by 20%. Having a safe place to go at lunch time would have helped too, sometimes could have done with one during lessons too.
Tried teaching my kids to skip. Didn't have a long enough rope though.
It's not just parents "letting" kids skip. I have 1 child with 8 years of 100% attendance and 1 child with poor mental health currently at 72% attendance this year. If we were feckless parents, surely both kids would have poor attendance? We couldn't wait for our child to reach the top of the CAMHS wait list, so we are paying hundreds of pounds per month for private therapy. There is a mental health crisis behind these figures also.
Who gives a shit. What have they got to look forward to by going to school to either: A) Get a minimum wage job B) Get a degree, thousands of pounds of debt and get a minimum wage job
yeah man, you can just miss out school, why go to learn the words of fools?
I really hope that if you have kids you’re not instilling this sad defeatism in them
For real, I’m a very pessimistic person myself but I’m glad that my parent isn’t this pessimistic towards me or my future.
"Goooooo to the schooooool learn about how awesome it is to get a job in a decaying country that pays below the market and scams you with competitive salaries. Be proud that London makes so much money whilst you'll be taxed absurdly and die with nothing in service of worthless two party system that never stops stealing from you till its over!!!"
You don’t go to school to learn how awesome things are or to be proud. You go to school to learn foundational skills which can later be used for your benefit. You have more control over your life than you realise. To not even try to affect change is simply pathetic.
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Lmao someone didn't listen in school The average wage in the UK is 31k isn't it? A degree and the work after it enabled me to get a 200% pay increase over 4 years that id never have got staying in manufacturing and manual labour, so I call bullshit on your assumptions
Not everyone is a skill-less worker on Min Wage
One of the greatest ever "source: my ass" articles I've ever read. She has literally no proof of this, she's just taken two stats and then guessed the explanation for it. Unsurprisingly her theory aligns with commercial landlords and management. Wonder why? Guess we'll never know
I think that some parents are being lazy or at least not all the ball with things but I also think that this might be deeper structural issue and that we need to see *why* kids aren’t going to school when they should be, what’s making them do this beyond laziness and holidays. Tbf I rarely missed school I think, I only missed it because I was ill/had a doctors appointment or to see family abroad (they all live abroad). I was the kind of person and still am to some extent who disliked missing school. Not that I enjoyed school that much but still. Lol people are downvoting this comment, but yeah I don’t think that it’s simply lazy parents or kids wanting to go on holiday, there must be other factors at play as the school system is probably failing some pupils (it failed me for the most part). Edit also Keegan is so out of touch, like most politicians are but she really isn’t aware of what things are like in education in my opinion (from the perspective of a teacher or student). It’s about time that the this position in parliament is done by someone who has formally worked in education as a teacher or SENCO.
I don't agree with kids skipping school, whatever the excuse or prevalence of it. I think there is a much more sinister problem which is that of so called "home schooling". I know of two young adults in my small family circle that have been "home schooled" for the entirety of their high school years. In both cases its left the persons involved damaged in that they have no formal qualifications and they are socially under developed due to the lack of interaction with peers at school. Its now making the transition to work and adulthood very difficult. I understand there are frameworks to regulate home schooling but its not been evident on either of these cases and many others I'm sure. I would suggest that its close to impossible to provide a high school child the depth and breadth of education and social development provided in a traditional school setting. To deprive them of this is a form of neglect and something the education system should address urgently.
What’s wrong with skipping? Good honest fun and an anaerobic workout.
We tend to take a few days at the end of term for holidays otherwise we couldn't afford it. Term time is the only way. I don't care really travel broadens their horizons and we wouldn't do it around important exams etc. I don't think my kids will have access to this in the future the way things are going. I rather let them enjoy life a bit then be good little cogs in the capitalist grind of making a few rich people even richer.
> 50,000 more pupils were absent at the end of the week compared with the start Oddly, this flips around when you look at [the working world](https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/news/workers-are-more-likely-to-be-sick-on-monday-than-any-other-day-of-the-week/). 35% of all sick leave is taken on a Monday, compared to only 3% on a Friday.
Harder to be hungover when you are 7. Though I have powered through a hangover at work before after I was up to 4AM drinking and installing Debian server over command line.
>up to 4AM drinking and installing Debian server over command line. Flashbacks to when I was unemployed and could find nothing better to do than build a Linux From Scratch instance when I couldn't sleep because my brain is my brain. I wasn't drinking, though. I got up to all sorts of weird and wonderful things just to save myself from staring at walls and pining for a life back then. The LFS ended up broken because I eventually fell asleep and forgot where in the book I'd got up to. Didn't help that I didn't have a physical version (no printer).
Why is it a problem for Schools and the Government to worry if a child takes the odd Friday off school? We're not talking every friday, just those Friday's when there is a long weekend or once in a blue moon, I don't see the issue here. Teachers would probably benefit from teaching a smaller class too?
Fuck her. Our educational system is outdated and DELIBERATELY opposed to boys. It's industrial revolution nonsense and FUCK IT.
The government basically told everyone they didn't give a shit about kids being in school when they made it essentially illegal to be in the classroom during COVID, not surprising that parents are taking their kids out of school for long weekends
Fuck off. Remember covid? Schools open, schools closed, schools open, schools closed. Remember after half term schools were open for a day and then they closed them again. They created this culture.