Sarah Sudea coaching and consultancy

Last month I launched a family coaching and school consultancy practice, with the aim of offering support on school attendance difficulties, with the needs of individual children front and centre. Here are 5 things I have learned since then...

1. Parents tell me they're not listened to. They have meetings at school and feel they are being lied to. They talk of 'battles' with the school. They have no faith that the 'reasonable adjustments' schools promise will happen in reality. There is no trust.

2. Schools have little capacity to handle the scale of the problem. Years of chronic underfunding have meant few LSAs in secondary schools and nobody applying for jobs when advertised. Stress around attendance reporting dominates, not the needs of children.

3. Parents often hit a brick wall when they contemplate removing their children from school. Their instinct tells them that school is the problem but life without it feels impossible. They say there are no other options.

4. Schools are unaware of the benefits of more flexible approaches for individual children. They don't know about flexi-schooling and LAs tell me they have no policies and can issue no guidance. Another brick wall to dismantle.

5. Finally, every single individual I have spoken to, in school and family contexts, CARES about distressed children struggling to go to school. Everybody - I repeat, everybody - wants to make it better and they want to work together to do so. But...... positions become polarised because school systems are rigid and inflexible. There is not enough money and good good people in schools have no time. Vicious cycles of blame and shame keep everybody stuck.

Somewhere in the middle there is often a profoundly distressed child. We CAN co-create spaces to foster listening and understanding. Schools CAN offer families tailored adjustments for their children without creating new burdens. Together we MUST do better.

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