Truancy may rise as students return from ‘pressure cooker homes’

TRUANCY could rise in the wake of school closures, Oxford researchers have found, as they warned of the “traumatic” effect of lockdown.

All pupils will experience “some adverse effects” from the pandemic, a report published by the University Oxford’s education department says.

For some children, the effects will be “traumatic and long lasting” and could have a negative impact on their response to returning to school in September, researchers said.

Prof Harry Daniels, one of the report’s authors, said there was a “real risk” that schools would see a rise in truancy when they reopened as children who have become withdrawn from learning during lockdown struggle to reintegrate into education.

“Some young people are already a bit on the anxious side and school generally is an uncomfortable place,” Prof Daniels said. “There are some pupils – and the people we spoke to said it was quite a substantial number – who have removed themselves a stage further and simply will not come out of their bedrooms. It is a reasonable concern that they also won’t come out of their bedroom when schools start again.”

The Oxford team interviewed head teachers as well as senior public health, mental health and NHS officials about the impact of coronavirus on children.

Researchers said schools could also see a rise in exclusions, as children who have been living with stressful home environments are suddenly confronted with routines and rules.

“We were told by several people, notably people in the NHS, about children living in ‘pressure cooker homes’,” Prof Daniels added. “Young people are absorbing all this pressure and they are like a bottle of fizzy liquid where there is a pressure building up until you take the top off and they explode.”

The report notes that schools are updating behaviour policies to include new rules dealing with health and hygiene regimes. This could also lead to a rise in exclusions, since schools “will become far less tolerant of students who refuse to follow instructions and comply with expectations”.