Non-attendance is one of the biggest problems facing our schools and experts say the reasons go way beyond casual "wagging" and traditional truancy issues.

Parenting and mental health groups have told a federal Senate Inquiry into school refusal that psychological and emotional problems often underlie the problem. 

The viewpoints come as experts struggle to understand why school refusal rates are rising nationally and the Western Plains App revealed nearly all schools across region had significant falls in student attendance in 2022. 

Speaking to the Senate Inquiry into the “national trend of school refusal”, public hearings held this month Jennifer Rickard from the Australian Parents Council said school refused is rooted in “emotional, social and psychological distress” 

“Kids can't learn if they're not having their basic needs met or if they're in a heightened stress response just by going to school,” she said. 

“We have nationally representative data that shows that major depression has the greatest impact, of all the measured mental disorders, on school attendance. Students with depression, on average, miss four weeks of school a year," said Black Dog Institute’s Director of Research Professor Jennifer Hudson. 

“It has a cumulative effect as well,” she added “The longer a child is away from school in a single episode, the more difficult it is for them to catch up both academically and socially. Kids with depression have this unfounded belief that they're inadequate and incompetent”.  

Beyond Blue told the Inquiry it wanted the Government ramp-up investment into “Be You: the national mental health in education initiative beyond June 2023, at an adequate level, to enable Be You to continue to support educators and meet demand for schools responding to school refusal and related wellbeing issues.” 

Calls for Trauma-Informed Practice  

In October last year the Senate’s education committee announced an inquiry into the rising trend of “school refusal” – which has been on the rise since the pandemic. 

The most disadvantaged areas tend to have the highest rates of school refusal. Often, students may be on school grounds but refuse to enter classes.

In an interview with the Western Plains App Jennifer Rickard from the Australian Parents Council elaborated on the Council’s stance saying “Adults in education need to better understand the children they work with have had very different experiences, had faced a lot of adversity and often have trauma. It's about them understanding that there are things in the school environment that can exacerbate that trauma”. 

“For instance a child that is bullied is not feeling safe at school. We know bullying rates are increasing so this is an issue that we really need to address”. 

Rickard said the council had consulted Dr Kristen Eccleston an Education Consultant from America, from Magruder high school, which developed a special unit within the school to assist kids experiencing school refusal. 

“The unit that looks at the psychological, social and emotional issues the student is facing before it looks at the academic problem. school requires. So they set-up youth workers, occupational therapists, psychologists and people who specialise in learning assistance.” 

She said each student was also able to start their own individual school project about something they were interested in as part of the program. 

The Federal Education Department told the inquiry it was unsure why school refusal had gone up. The NSW Education Department told the Western Plains App absences had risen since COVID and requested we ask The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) for reasons for the sharp increase in refusal specifically in our region.  

ACARA responded by saying “Our reporting team advises that the data we receive at the school level does not give us the scope to provide further insights on the reasons for absenteeism, beyond the previous statements about the impact of the COVID-19 Omicron outbreak, high influenza outbreaks and floods experienced in some regions of Australia during that time”.