PM Tony Abbott has again raised the issue of school attendance for Aboriginal young people. He says that the literacy gap between indigenous and no-indigenous students, especially for those living in remote and rural Australia will not be reduced unless children go to school. He has a point.
Although the more you miss, the less you learn, issues of school attendance need to be addressed with a systemic analysis and not a blunt carrot and stick approach. This simply doesn’t work. I once taught in a special ‘truancy unit’ in London (where we had a 95 % average attendance rate!) and then later became coordinator of a district wide behaviour and attendance project. Although these experiences were a far cry from rural Australia there is much that we learnt that applies across boundaries.
One of the most useful frameworks for thinking about attendance was “Push and Pull”. The Push factors comprise what is happening, or not happening, in school that is pushing young people out and making them not want to be there. How a student feels is critical: students who feel safe, that they belong and they matter, that people believe in them and they are making progress with their learning – and that this learning is relevant to their life – are more likely to be motivated to come to school. Having friends is critical. When children and young people feel badly about themselves within the school environment either socially or academically these are powerful Push factors. So we need to ensure that students experience positive feelings. This also opens up the neurological pathways to learning so they make the best of what is on offer. No-one learns well when they are scared, anxious or overwhelmingly miserable. Sometimes simply feeling confused will push students out. This may occur where their culture is not acknowledged and valued and/or where they are not familiar with the language being used in the classroom. It can take a great deal of effort to try and ‘fit in’ and sometimes this becomes too much.
On the other hand we need to consider the Pull factors – what is happening or not happening at home or in the community to pull young people out, making it more sense for them to be somewhere else than at school. This includes concerns about their family. In my experience, family loss or violence often keeps young people at home. They want to keep an eye on things. They may feel responsible to keep their mum or other members of the family safe. If they are not there how can they do this? School becomes irrelevant by comparison.
Where young children have poor attendance this may be the outcome of a broad spectrum of mental health issues in the family. A child cannot get to school if no-one is around to get them up and dressed. It is not their fault. When children (and sometimes their parents) get into trouble for being late it might be easier not to go at all rather than face a fuming or sarcastic teacher at the school gates.
Parents who have had negative experiences themselves at school may not give their children positive messages about the value of education. It is easy to blame families for poor attendance but this just entrenches negative beliefs and approaches. Schools can work constructively with families from the outset, positioning them as the experts on their child and seeking ways to respectfully engage them in the life of the school community. This way of thinking does not always come easily but has the potential of changing relationships for the better – and therefore student outcomes. Messages about value are not just explicit in individual conversations, they are implicit in many factors, such as seating arrangements in meetings, taking account of cultural norms and practices and looking for shared concerns.
Similarly with behaviour – children who face many such adversities in their young lives do not always behave well. How a school responds to challenging behaviour is critical. A punitive response will just deepen the desire to stay away. Excluding students from school is probably the worst thing to do – it shows the young person they are not wanted and does nothing to boost motivation or positive relationships. A ‘day out’ presented as time for reflection or a breathing space for everyone to calm down does not give the same message, especially if there is a plan for re-integration that takes account of student perspectives and needs. Restorative approaches are more effective, especially when the school has built a sense of community.
Older students may find that it makes more sense to be with mates doing whatever they are doing – or perhaps getting a job, any job. What are we doing to ensure that school is a place where everyone feels they belong? In order to be aspirational students need to feel confident. What are schools doing to promote confidence in all their students? This requires strengths based language and a way for students to identify and grow their personal and interpersonal qualities as well as academic abilities. Not everyone will be an A* student – and what’s more we don’t need them to be. But it does make sense for everyone to feel that school is relevant in helping them reach their own potential and that this, whatever it might be, is valued.
Although factors are rarely discrete in any one individual, the Push Pull Framework provides a useful way of conceptualising and analysing school attendance and therefore thinking what to do about it. It rapidly becomes evident that this is not just about individual students but about how schools promote strong school attendance for everyone. Relationships, feelings, culture, pedagogy, home-school interactions and valuing diverse strengths all matter. There are no simple quick fixes, Mr Abbott, but if you are really serious about Closing the Gap these are the things that need to be taken into account.
Dr Sue Roffey is Director of the Aboriginal Girls Circle, an initiative to promote connectedness and resilience in indigenous young women. This is auspiced through the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.