In my experience it is getting worse. This behaviour has always been common in the cohort we once called "smoke pit kids", ie kids who were typically from poorer households with less support from guardians, but it's now expanding into kids from more "regular" backgrounds. (As far as I can see the rich kids are still thriving.)
Obviously letting social media companies malformed children's brains for profit + climate change is affecting mental health and we all know that. There is another factor I don't think people might have considered that's a little more subtle:
When it became normalized/encouraged for students to stay home if they feel sick, even if the symptoms were not observable to parents, there are certain students who really struggled /still struggle to use this power responsibly and have started to use it to avoid any anticipated negative interaction at school. Spotty attendance records are way up, and would you be surprised there is an overrepresentation of these types of absences on test days, or even local "feeling sick" for the blocks where there might be an assignment due?
I'm not trying to argue that this culture of staying home when sick is bad or that we shouldn't trust kids who say they're sick, but I think it sometimes goes overlooked that kids aren't smaller adults, they have brains that are still developing and some kids really struggle to use this power responsibly, instead use it as a tool for avoidance and end up digging themselves a hole.
When it became normalized/encouraged for students to stay home if they feel sick, even if the symptoms were not observable to parents, there are certain students who really struggled /still struggle to use this power responsibly and have started to use it to avoid any anticipated negative interaction at school. Spotty attendance records are way up, and would you be surprised there is an overrepresentation of these types of absences on test days, or even local “feeling sick” for the blocks where there might be an assignment due?
Can you expand on this? It's not something I'm familiar with and over here we pretty much still pack the kids off to school if they're not showing an abnormal temperature on thermometer.
Well for several years when schools were in session during the pandemic, students were (correctly) encouraged to stay home if they had any symptoms that could be consistent with having covid. However, many of these symptoms are not detectable by any exterior evaluation, like fatigue, body aches, headache, or nausea.
As a result there has been a subset of students who have taken advantage of that ambiguity and used it to stay home when they are otherwise well for many different reasons.
Ahh I see. I'm not aware of that having been a trend here but could be outside the circles involved. The majority of focus I hear on schools at the moment is teacher's strikes, particularly because they're probably the strongest union and most damaging strikes to do in the UK. Schools act as childcare allowing people to work, without schools people also stop working so a teachers strike effectively causes a knock-on general strike of sorts. Could be that this organising is overshadowing these kinds of trends being talked about.
In my experience it is getting worse. This behaviour has always been common in the cohort we once called "smoke pit kids", ie kids who were typically from poorer households with less support from guardians, but it's now expanding into kids from more "regular" backgrounds. (As far as I can see the rich kids are still thriving.)
Obviously letting social media companies malformed children's brains for profit + climate change is affecting mental health and we all know that. There is another factor I don't think people might have considered that's a little more subtle:
When it became normalized/encouraged for students to stay home if they feel sick, even if the symptoms were not observable to parents, there are certain students who really struggled /still struggle to use this power responsibly and have started to use it to avoid any anticipated negative interaction at school. Spotty attendance records are way up, and would you be surprised there is an overrepresentation of these types of absences on test days, or even local "feeling sick" for the blocks where there might be an assignment due?
I'm not trying to argue that this culture of staying home when sick is bad or that we shouldn't trust kids who say they're sick, but I think it sometimes goes overlooked that kids aren't smaller adults, they have brains that are still developing and some kids really struggle to use this power responsibly, instead use it as a tool for avoidance and end up digging themselves a hole.
Can you expand on this? It's not something I'm familiar with and over here we pretty much still pack the kids off to school if they're not showing an abnormal temperature on thermometer.
Well for several years when schools were in session during the pandemic, students were (correctly) encouraged to stay home if they had any symptoms that could be consistent with having covid. However, many of these symptoms are not detectable by any exterior evaluation, like fatigue, body aches, headache, or nausea.
As a result there has been a subset of students who have taken advantage of that ambiguity and used it to stay home when they are otherwise well for many different reasons.
Ahh I see. I'm not aware of that having been a trend here but could be outside the circles involved. The majority of focus I hear on schools at the moment is teacher's strikes, particularly because they're probably the strongest union and most damaging strikes to do in the UK. Schools act as childcare allowing people to work, without schools people also stop working so a teachers strike effectively causes a knock-on general strike of sorts. Could be that this organising is overshadowing these kinds of trends being talked about.
Yeah honestly I don't think most people are aware of this pattern, which is why I mentioned it.