The aim of this project is to understand the determinants of Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA) and to develop a programme that will help schools support students with poor attendance, by making school a place where students feel safe, supported and connected.
Background
In England, about eight students in every classroom struggle to go to school. Many students stay at home because they feel anxious about things happening at school like unfair punishment or problems with teachers and friends. This is called Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA). Researchers think that EBSA is more common among students with mental health difficulties, but we don’t fully understand all the reasons why. The government has funded support programmes to help students attend school, but testing showed they don’t work very well. Parents and teachers worry that these programmes don’t provide the right kind of support for students with mental health difficulties or special learning needs and do not consider how young people feel at school.
Project Aims
We will develop a programme that will help schools support students with poor attendance, by making school a place where students feel safe, supported and connected.
Project Activity
- First, we will link anonymous data from young people mental health surveys, healthcare records and an education database, to help us understand which young people are most affected by EBSA and why.
- We will then conduct a survey and interviews with young people with EBSA, their parents and school staff to find out why they miss school, and what would help them to go back. This information will help us to understand more about EBSA.
- Then, we will ask a group of young people to look at information we collected about EBSA. They will identify the most important issues our programme should address to stop EBSA from happening and help students return to school.
- In the next stage, young people with EBSA, their parents and professionals (school staff, mental health professionals and researchers) will help us to decide which strategies to include in a school programme to tackle EBSA.
- Once we’ve chosen these strategies, we will test the programme in 2-3 secondary schools with high level of attendance problems. We will check if the programme is useful and works well in schools. We will also see how many students, parents and staff are willing to take part. This will help us plan for further testing in more schools.
Anticipated or actual outputs
The public involvement panels will help us decide the best ways to share the findings of the project. We’ll share our findings on a project website, in newsletters, on social media posts, in blogs and through webinars. We’ll present the programme to schools and mental health networks and work with charities and support groups focused on school attendance. We will also publish the study findings in academic journals and present them at professional and academic conferences.
Who is involved?
- Dr Joanna Reid, University of Cambridge
- Ms Hayley Gains, University of Cambridge
Contact
Jo Reid, jpa44@cam.ac.uk
