School Avoidance Is a Crisis of Connection, Not a Behaviour Problem
When a child begins to struggle with school attendance, the most visible sign is often an empty chair.
That empty chair can quickly become the focus of every conversation: attendance percentages, missed sessions, return-to-school plans and the consequences of further absence.
But what if the absence is not the beginning of the problem?
What if it is the visible end result of a child gradually losing their connection with learning, routines, friendships, trusted adults - or with school itself?
New research with secondary-school staff describes England’s attendance crisis as a crisis of disengagement rather than simply a problem of behaviour. That matters because it changes the question we need to ask.
Instead of asking only, “How do we get this child back through the school gates?”, we also need to ask:
What has made education feel unsafe, inaccessible or no longer worth returning to - and what needs to change?
What are teachers saying about the attendance crisis?
In September 2026, Impetus and Public First published A Crisis of Disengagement, the final report in a three-year programme exploring school attendance through the experiences of parents, pupils and school staff.
The latest study was based on nine focus groups involving 62 classroom teachers, attendance leads and senior leaders from secondary schools serving disadvantaged communities.
The report found that staff were not most concerned about an occasional day of absence or a family holiday. Their greatest concern was for pupils entering a spiral of sustained disengagement: losing routines, falling behind in lessons, becoming disconnected from friends and trusted adults, and finding it increasingly difficult to return.
Staff linked attendance difficulties to overlapping pressures including poverty, anxiety, emotionally based school avoidance, unmet SEND, long waits for mental-health support and the loss of wider family services. They described relationship-based support - trusted adults, mentoring, home visits, predictable routines and a sense of belonging - as particularly valuable, but difficult to sustain within existing resources.
This was qualitative research with a relatively small and specific group. It should not be presented as a survey of what every teacher in England believes. However, it offers detailed evidence of what frontline professionals in the participating schools were experiencing. It also has particular value because the findings echo themes previously raised by pupils and parents.
Attendance can be the end of the story, not the beginning
The new teacher research closely reflects what families told Sunshine Support during our 2026 school avoidance research.
Our survey gathered eligible responses relating to 1,103 children and young people with current or previous experience of attendance difficulties. It was lived-experience research, not a nationally representative prevalence study, so it cannot tell us how common each experience is across every family. It can, however, tell us what happened to a substantial group of children whose families had experienced these difficulties directly.
Before attendance became difficult:
31.9% of children were described as regularly showing signs of distress;
23.1% were frequently anxious;
23.9% were occasionally reluctant to attend; and
only 19.3% were described as happy to attend.
Taken together, 78.9% were already showing distress, frequent anxiety or some reluctance before their attendance deteriorated.
That finding challenges the idea that school avoidance begins on the first morning a child remains at home.
A child may still have 100% attendance while becoming increasingly distressed. They may be masking throughout the day, struggling to sleep, experiencing headaches or stomach aches, becoming overwhelmed after school or repeatedly asking whether they must go back tomorrow.
None of that will necessarily appear in the attendance data.
If intervention begins only after a percentage falls below a particular threshold, we may miss the period in which a child was still attending but their connection with education was already fraying.
Why does connection matter so much?
Connection can sound like a soft concept. In reality, it can affect whether school feels possible.
A child’s connection with education can include:
feeling physically and emotionally safe;
having at least one trusted adult;
being accepted by peers;
knowing what will happen during the day;
being able to access learning at an appropriate level;
having sensory and communication needs understood;
believing that adults will listen when something is wrong;
feeling that attending has purpose and value.
The Impetus/Public First report describes belonging, friendships, routine and trusted adults as practical attendance factors - not optional extras. Staff described how absence can disrupt those protective connections. A pupil misses lessons, feels behind or exposed when they return, becomes more anxious, and then misses more school. At the same time, they may lose contact with friends and the adults who previously helped them feel secure.
Absence can therefore be both a result of disconnection and something that deepens it.
This does not mean that attendance is unimportant. Sustained absence can affect learning, relationships, wellbeing and future opportunities. It means that improving attendance sustainably may require more than repeatedly securing a child’s physical presence.
If the experience awaiting them has not changed, getting through the gate today does not necessarily make tomorrow easier.
School avoidance is rarely caused by one thing
In Sunshine Support’s survey, families identified a wide range of factors they believed were contributing to attendance difficulties:
82.9% identified aspects of the school environment, including noise, sensory demands, routines, transitions and expectations;
59.7% identified safety;
55.5% identified systems and policies;
54.1% identified relationships; and
47.9% identified learning.
Crucially, 78.9% selected at least two contributing factors.
This matters because a single attendance difficulty may sit at the intersection of sensory overwhelm, unmet SEND, bullying, academic pressure, inflexible policies, anxiety and damaged trust.
A child facing several barriers at once does not necessarily need more motivation to tolerate them. They may need adults to identify which barriers can be reduced or removed.
National attendance data should also prompt questions about accessibility. In autumn 2025/26, Sunshine Support’s analysis of Department for Education data found persistent absence among 35.61% of pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) and 28.49% of pupils receiving SEN Support, compared with 16.75% of pupils with no identified SEN.
Those figures do not prove that SEND causes school avoidance. Nor do they explain the circumstances of every absent child. They do show that attendance difficulties are not evenly distributed and that children with identified SEND are substantially overrepresented.
Parents and teachers are not on opposing sides
Attendance discussions can easily become adversarial.
Parents may feel blamed for being unable to make an overwhelmed child attend. Teachers may feel they are being expected to compensate for gaps in CAMHS, SEND provision, social care and family support while also teaching a full timetable. Attendance teams may be managing safeguarding concerns, legal duties, data and repeated attempts to engage families.
The new research does not suggest that every parent and professional interprets every absence in the same way. It records real tensions, including disagreement between some classroom teachers and senior leaders about responsibility for attendance.
But beneath those tensions is striking common ground.
Families in Sunshine Support’s research described children facing multiple barriers and showing distress before attendance collapsed. Pupils in the earlier Impetus/Public First research spoke about whether school felt safe, meaningful and welcoming. The latest report finds staff describing the importance of belonging, routine, relationships and wider services.
These groups are not necessarily describing competing realities. Often, they are viewing the same loss of connection from different positions.
That gives us a better starting point than blame:
What is the child communicating?
When did the difficulty begin?
What has changed?
Where and when is distress highest?
Are needs being recognised and met?
Which parts of the day feel unsafe or inaccessible?
Who does the child trust?
What would make education feel manageable again?
Attendance targets must recognise individual progress
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has also called for a more individualised approach.
Its 2026 position statement supports a “support first” approach, better cooperation between health services, schools and families, and attendance goals based on the individual child. The College warns that standardised targets and reward systems can leave children with long-term health conditions feeling misunderstood or further excluded.
It gives a particularly useful example: for one child, an increase from 30% attendance to 35% may represent meaningful progress.
That does not mean accepting that a child should be left without education. It means recognising the difference between an ambitious, carefully supported step forward and a generic target that disregards the child’s health, needs and starting point.
England’s Department for Education guidance also says schools and local authorities should work with pupils and families to understand and remove barriers, with support provided before legal intervention wherever possible.
Attendance matters. That is precisely why the response must be capable of helping a child reconnect with education, rather than making them feel punished for being unable to access it.
What does rebuilding connection look like?
There is no single intervention that will work for every child. Rebuilding connection begins with understanding the individual pattern and responding to the barriers identified.
Depending on the child, this could include:
1. Acting before attendance collapses
Distress while a child is still attending should be taken seriously. Changes in sleep, physical symptoms, shutdowns, meltdowns, increased anxiety or repeated reluctance may be early signs that school is becoming difficult to access.
2. Identifying a genuinely trusted adult
A named adult is only helpful if the child experiences that person as safe and available. The relationship needs time, consistency and the child’s trust - not simply a name written into a plan.
3. Investigating unmet needs
Attendance difficulties may be a reason to explore special educational needs, communication differences, sensory needs, mental or physical health, bullying, trauma and learning demands. Support should not depend on a child first reaching crisis.
4. Making concrete changes to the environment
Reasonable adjustments might involve quieter arrival arrangements, predictable routines, reduced sensory demand, a safe space, changes to transitions, flexibility around uniform, modified learning demands, or support during unstructured times.
5. Measuring more than physical presence
Progress may initially include communicating with a trusted adult, engaging with learning from another setting, visiting the site at a quieter time, tolerating a short supported session or recovering some sense of safety. These steps should be purposeful and regularly reviewed, but they should not be dismissed simply because they do not immediately produce full-time attendance.
6. Protecting trust between home and school
Families and professionals will sometimes disagree. Clear communication, careful listening and an assumption that everyone is trying to secure meaningful education for the child can prevent disagreement from becoming another barrier.
A different attendance question
The attendance crisis cannot be solved by pretending absence has no consequences. But neither can it be solved by treating every absence as the same or assuming that pressure addresses the reason a child cannot attend.
The emerging picture across families, pupils, teachers and paediatric professionals is more complex:
attendance difficulty can develop after a long period of distress;
unmet SEND, mental health, poverty, safety and school environment can overlap;
deteriorating attendance can further weaken routines and relationships;
standardised targets can obscure meaningful individual progress; and
reconnection depends on safety, trust, belonging and accessible education.
School avoidance is not evidence that a child does not care about learning. It is not evidence that a parent does not value education. And it should not automatically be interpreted as a behaviour problem to be corrected.
Sometimes the empty chair is telling us that the child’s connection with education has broken down.
Our task is not simply to fill the chair again.
It is to understand what happened - and help make education safe, meaningful and sustainable for that child.
