School attendance

According to the UK government, any child who misses more than 10% of school is “persistently absent” from school. Alarming news headlines inform us that this “persistent absence” is now at record rates of 20%. As a parent and a social philosopher interested in the topics of illness and disability, I find the guidance more worrying than these numbers.

Schools in the UK usually provide 190 days of instruction a year. Missing 10% or 19 days means missing just under 4 weeks of school. We have to remember, however, that these 190 days are not distributed randomly over the year. During the summer, when the number of contagious illnesses is lowest, there is a long break from school. The guidance does not differentiate according to age either. Schooling is compulsory between the ages of 5 and 18, which means children usually start school at age 4. While a 14 year old might be able to go to school with even a relatively bad cold, a 4 year old (or 7 year old) will not be able to do so. Small children delight in close proximity to each other – hence they are likely to pick up both head lice and viral illnesses more quickly from each other too than adults would. They are also likely to do things which result in injuries like broken bones. As a result they are likely to be ill more often. Family size also matters. According to a study conducted in 2009, families with one child had a respiratory viral infection in the household about a third of the time, but this rocketed to more than half the time for families with two or more children. By contrast, families with only adults had viral infections in the household only 7% of the time. Children are simply ill a lot. It is easy for them to miss two weeks of school between September and February, when schools start internal procedures to tackle “pesistent absence” half-way through the school year.

There are practical reasons why we might not want to set the bar for problematic absence so low. It might deflect attention from the 2% of children who are severely absent from school, and miss more than half of all school sessions. It creates unnecessary administration and conflict between schools and parents. It shows a lack of trust in parents to know when their children are too ill to go to school, and in teachers to recognise when absence is truly problematic. It might mean even greater workloads for family doctors if children with minor illnesses need to have their absence from school certified.

Beyond this, there are also questions about how the state teaches us about our relationship to our bodies, and particularly about our relationship to ill, sick bodies. First of all, should even 14 year olds go to school with a bad cold? Should an adult go to work? When I asked my 7 year old, she informed me this was a very bad idea, because other children and even the teachers will then become unwell. We are used to pushing through common illnesses instead of resting. It has only been 5 years since we were in the middle of the first wave of Covid lockdowns, but we have already returned to this mindset. Incidentally, we also fail to provide parents with the resources to look after sick children, especially in the absence of the extended social networks of the past.

In neoliberal societies, illness is often equated with inability to work and health is equated with ability to work. Foucault argued that schools teach about the disciplinary regime of society as much as they teach about other aspects of knowledge. In the case of setting persistent absence at a 90% attendance rate, they teach that citizens, or rather workers, have a duty to be healthy enough to work most of the time. This is problematic when we consider that many people will experience chronic illness and disability throughout their lifetime.

When it comes to guidance on when a child is too ill to go to school, the focus is firmly on measurable, observable symptoms, rather than individual illness experiences. For example, the Department of Education writes: “It’s usually safe for you to send your child to school with mild illnesses, like a minor cough, runny nose or sore throat. However, children should stay at home if they have a high temperature of 38C or above.” I think we have all had mild illnesses, like colds, which felt very unpleasant even in the absence of a fever. Talking to children about how they are feeling and their experience of illness is not mentioned anywhere. This mirrors the problems that people have in receiving diagnoses when clinicians have to rely on the testimony of patients, including many autoimmune diseases. This could also be an example of epistemic injustice towards children, as we do not take them seriously as people who know about their own body, unless we can observe symptoms ourselves, such as fever, vomiting or diarrhoea.

Relying on objective measurements, like body temperature, means that we don’t learn to recognise the signs of illness in our own bodies. It is an impoverished way of relating to ourselves. We need to be able to understand when we are hungry, thirsty, need the toilet or are in need of rest. The way our society is organised often denies us to follow these basic bodily demand, or meets them inadequately through junk food, caffeine or paracetamol tablets. It is a cause for concern that we start teaching this already to 4 year olds.