This project aims to understand the perspectives of parents/carers whose child/children regularly do not attend school. With the rise in school non-attendance, it is important to understand this area better and explore how this is impacting the children and their family.
Background
A child’s refusal to go to school due to anxiety has become the number one issue for parents and carers. More than a fifth (22.5%) of pupils are persistently absent, which is around double the pre-pandemic rate. However, there is very little research conducted exploring school avoidance, characteristics of the children who are regularly classed as persistent absentees, and reasons for school avoidance. There is little guidance available that supports parents' needs either to support them getting their child back to the classroom and/or with support required for home schooling if this is deemed the preferred option.
Project Aims
To address the reasons for child’s school avoidance, and to understand the impact on the family and what support is needed from the parents’ perspective.
Project Activity
We will contact individual online interviews with parents/carers.
Anticipated or actual outputs
We will use data from the interviews not only for publication but also to help design a questionnaire for use in a large sample online survey, seeking to quantify the experience of families with children who avoid school. It is anticipated that the data will be used as feedback to a stakeholder group, and it will also be written up for publication.
Papers and resources
Who is involved?
- Co-Principal Investigator: Dr Amanda Ludlow, University of Hertfordshire
- Co-Principal Investigator: Professor Daksha Trivedi, University of Hertfordshire
- Jasmine Chavda, Research Fellow, University of Hertfordshire
Contact
Jasmine Chavda, j.chavda2@herts.ac.uk
