#31 - Insights from the Australian Network for School Attendance Conference - The School Can't Experience

Episode Transcript
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Leisa Reichelt (00:05):
Hello and welcome to the School Can't
Experience Podcast.
I'm Leisa Reichelt, and thispodcast is brought to you by the
School Can't Australiacommunity.
Caring for a young person who isstruggling to attend school can
be a stressful and isolatingexperience, but you are not
alone.
Thousands of parents acrossAustralia and many more around
the world face similarchallenges and experiences every

(00:26):
day.
So we have something a littledifferent today, which is a
debrief of the recent AustralianNetwork for School Attendance
conference, which most of uswere unable to attend and
probably didn't even knowexisted.
This was an opportunity for allkinds of stakeholders involved
in school attendance inAustralia to come together,
listen and learn from eachother, whether they be

(00:46):
educators, academics, or peoplewith lived experience.
Tiffany Westphal and LouiseRogers from School Can't
Australia attended andparticipated in the conference
on our behalf, and they werevery keen to come back and share
with you all what they hadlearned and observed.
This isn't an academicconversation.
It covers a wide range oftopics, some of which are super

(01:07):
practical, and others are justreally thought provoking.
I hope you enjoy it.
Okay.
Let's start by giving folks somecontext as to why we're gathered
here today.
We have Tiffany Westphal andLouise Rogers from School Can't
Australia with us, and they haverecently attended an interesting
conference.

(01:28):
And we wanted to come togetherand talk about what they saw and
heard at the conference, andtheir reflections on that, as
well as the presentations thatTiff and Lou did there.
So welcome to you both.

Louise Rogers (01:39):
Thank you.

Let's get a little bit of context on this
conference.
What was the conference?
What was the remit or thepurpose of the conference?
Just tell us a little bit aboutit so we know what we're dealing
with here.

Okay, so we went to the Australian Network for
School Attendance Conference.
It was held on the 4th and 5thof September.
And, so it was an academicconference, but it brought
together people who researchattendance with people who have
lived experience, and alsoeducators and people who are in

(02:15):
government.
Anyone who's kind of interestedin school attendance.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) (02:21):
So we had heads of attendance teams
from a couple different States.

Government folk?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her (02:27):
Yeah.
People from AERO, from GratinInstitute, from, a number of
different places.

Just define who's AERO?

Tiffany Westphal (sh (02:38):
Australian Education Research Organisation.
Its a government fundedresearch.
One of the big fourorganisations that the Federal
Education Minister's thinkingabout rolling together.

Interesting.
You guys were there to helprepresent the lived experience?

So we attended as interested
stakeholders, representing theinterests of our community,
School Can't Australia.

We held a round table about the terminology we
use to talk about schoolattendance.
And Tiffany presented someresearch she's been doing with
Griffith University, or so Ishould say co-presented that
research, using a tool she'sdeveloped called the Student
Stress Investigation.

(03:26):
And, we met up with researcherswith whom we have been working.
There's been a, a new paper comeout, a conceptual paper, all
about the term School Can't andwhy we use that term.

We also had the report by by Kara
and Kirsten as well.
Which was a report that wascommissioned by School Can't
Australia or donated to SchoolCan't Australia.
An investigative study lookinginto the experiences of parents
and carers supporting SchoolCan't kids.

Now, you asked to come and share your
observations and experience backwith the community through the
podcast.
What prompted you?
'cause you go to lots ofconferences.
What made you wanna come backand talk about this one?

We've had skin in the game, and we want to ensure
that research and policy listensto lived experience and reflects
the things we find work and thethings that we find don't work,
so that we can better supportour families.

Yeah.
And obviously not everybody whohas a child who's experiencing
School Can't can attend aconference like this.
So, I guess we wanted to alsorelay some information about
things that we heard.

Alright, well let's get stuck into it.
What are some that stand out toyou as being particularly
memorable?

I really liked the start of day two, which was
when lived experience presentersstarted talking and taking
stage.
There was a young woman with hermum, and she was talking to her
experience of school attendancedifficulties when she was at
school.
There was a young indigenouswoman also talking about her

(05:11):
experiences at school, and, amum who'd been talking about
supporting her children atschool.
And I think for me it was veryvalidating to hear those stories
because we weren't connected tothose presenters.
And it was lovely to hear theirlanguage and their framing

(05:32):
reflected very much what I thinkwe have experienced ourselves in
the context of our community.

Yeah, I agree.
I particularly enjoyed hearingKiara and Leanne Brooke.
Kiara's in her early twentiesnow but had a lived experience
of School Can't, spanning anumber of years through high
school.
and there was lots of commonthemes that we hear, you know,
came from those presentations.

I noticed that you've zoned in immediately to
what you enjoyed and what wasthe most familiar in the
conference.
Was that the general tone ofyour experience there, or was
that the exception rather thanthe rule?

Well, you see, the first day got off
to a really shaky start.
When we heard from AERO, I thinkthat was quite a triggering,
presentation for us to sitthrough.
The AERO research has some bigthings missing.
There was no recognition ofdisability and when questioned
the reason disability didn'tcome up in AERO's research

(06:36):
report was that ACARA doesn'tcollect any data about students
with disability.
So there was nothing for them toanalyze.
And, it really wasn't till thelast slide where Dr.
Olivia Groves asked what are thelinks between system level
factors and attendance and whatworks for diverse student groups
as being questions for furtherresearch.

(06:58):
I was also pretty dismayed tohear that they had not had time
given to them to consult withcommunity either.
And so they went to experts.

What kind of experts did they talk to?

So academics who work in the
attendance space, in Australiaand overseas as well.
I think for the indigenouscommunity, there was some stuff
there and I heard in AERO'sreport, a lot of really good
stuff in relation to support forindigenous students.
And there was a part of me thatfelt they used the same lens,

(07:35):
they used to look at studentswho are indigenous, and use that
same framework applied tostudents with disability.
It could have been a reallygreat thing.,

Just to clarify when we're talking about
disability, we are includingfolks who are neurodivergent as
part of that disability cohort.
So you said that presentationwas quite triggering.
What was it that was triggeringabout it?

It's the absence of recognition that,
you know, we know that's about70 to 80% of our parent carer
population at School Can'tAustralia is caring for students
who are neurodivergent, who areautistic or ADHD most commonly.
And so to not have theirexperiences represented at the

(08:24):
level of the AustralianEducation Research organisation
was pretty disappointing for us.

That's just through the absence of that data
being available to them.

Yeah.

Yeah.
Makes me think of all of thosenotifications that we all get
every morning, asking us why ourkids aren't going to school, and
the woeful set of options thatare usually presented to us as
another example of where theopportunity for data capture is
not being taken.

It's not only the opportunity for data capture,
though, it's also they could usethat messaging in a completely
different way that, you know,instead of saying attendance
counts and all these bad thingsare gonna happen the more days
you miss, What a difference thatwould make in the messaging.
If we turned it around and madeit an invitation, come and talk
to us.

(09:10):
We are here and we are here tosupport you and your child in
their education.
What can we do?

Indeed.
Okay.
So AERO report missed the markin terms of what you might have
hoped would come from theinsight.
What else was happening on dayone?

Amy Meade looked at a longitudinal
study of Australian children.
Growing up in Australia was thename of the study.
Started in 2003.
It followed approximately 10,000children, in two cohorts.
They collected data every twoyears, about health and
wellbeing, home environment,experiences at school, classroom

(09:49):
practices, and neighborhoodcharacteristics.
She was looking at establishingthe prevalence of, School Can't
in Australian students.
and What are the characteristicsassociated with greater risk of
experiencing School Can't?
There's very limitedlongitudinal data and there
aren't very many longitudinalstudies looking into experiences

(10:13):
of School Can't either.
So I was curious to hear aboutthe findings.
I don't think they're finishedyet but the first challenge that
Amy talked about was being ableto identify information from the
data that was collected thatmight indicate a student was
experiencing School Can't,because that wasn't something

(10:37):
they explicitly measured.
And they looked at it over time,approximately a bit more than
75% of students experiencedSchool Can't, in a single
episode.
With, smaller and smallerprevalence, for kids who are
experiencing it, know, four orfive episodes over the study.

Interested to understand what an episode is,
how much do you have to not goto school for that to be
considered an episode?
I wonder

I don't know.

75% is pretty high though, isn't it?

Yep.
They got some data on bullying.
So there's a clear, relationshipbetween the experience of being
bullied in the past 12 monthsand school refusal.
There's also a relationshipbetween having friends at school
and School Can't.
So having at least one friendseemed to be a protective
factor.
There were three findings shefinished her presentation with.

(11:32):
One was that the pre COVID 19prevalence was perhaps higher
than indicated by priorestimates.
Another finding was thatdepression, anxiety, autism, and
ADHD are all very highlyrepresented in impacted
students.
And that we perhaps need toconsider how these students can
be better supported.

(11:54):
And also that we, you know, interms of bullying, we need to
seek ways to address bullying,look for opportunities to
establish peer connections andfriendships, especially in upper
primary and lower secondary.

Any other highlights from day one?

We got to hear from the Catholic
Schools Parramatta Diocese,There was some encouraging stuff
presented by Mel Franciscus, whotalked about the intersection
between school attendance anddisability.
Louise and I both sat theregoing, oh, this all sounds very
familiar and, and really greatthat they're thinking along

(12:31):
these lines.
There were a few interestingthings when they're talking
about responses to schoolattendance difficulties, schools
talk about multi-tiered systemsof support.
the multi-tiered system ofsupport level one is an
intervention that everybodybenefits from, and then as you
go up the scale.

(12:52):
Level two is supports that areprovided to smaller groups of
students.
Support at a level three isprovided usually one-on-one to a
student who's experiencing acutedistress.
And it was interesting when theylooked at the number of students
referred to the service for tierthree attendance support.

(13:14):
48% of those had a diagnosis and22% had an imputed diagnosis.

What's an imputed diagnosis, Tiff?

So, under the National Consistent
Collection of Data, the NCCD, isa funding program from the
federal government that allowsschools to impute a diagnosis.
So what that means is thatthey're able to say this student
needs supports, and regardlessof whether they have a diagnosis

(13:45):
or not, we can impute adiagnosis and then register that
with the NCCD, and providesupports.

So in layman's terms, are the schools basically
saying there's no formaldiagnosis, but it's pretty clear
to us that this kid is ADHD orautistic or dyslexic

Basically 10 weeks worth of extra support,
which means evidence to showthat this young person needs the
support.

That makes me think of all the people that
I've spoken to, who have beentold through the education
system that they're not entitledto any support until they have a
diagnosis, which either they maybe on a very long waiting list
or unable to afford.

Yeah.
And that's why the federalgovernment set this system up
where you can impute diagnosis.
They just have to describesupports that are provided to
the student.

That feels like something that could be helpful
for parents to know about ifthey're engaging in this'trying
to get support from my child'but you need a diagnosis'
conversation.

It's helpful for people to know some
stuff about the NCCD.
So when you have a kid who can'tgo to school, sometimes they say
to you, well, we can't apply forfunding under the NCCD because
they're not at school.
But they only have to have 10weeks worth of documented
adjustments made anytime in theprevious 12 months I think it

(15:09):
is.
So it doesn't have to be themost recent 10 weeks.
And it doesn't have to be acontinuous 10 weeks either.
And lots of schools don'trealize that they think that,
because the kid's not at schoolnow, and hasn't been for 10
weeks, they can't be registeredfor the NCCD.
There's lots of greatinformation on the NCCD website,

(15:31):
that's accessible for parentsand carers.
So you can go and do someresearch.
Under the NCCD there are, Ithink three different
categories.
So there's supports providedthat support a student who's
experiencing cognitivedifficulties, supports provided
when a student is experiencingphysical difficulties, physical

(15:51):
disability, and then also, forthose who are experiencing
social emotional difficulties.
Now, most of us who have kidsexperiencing School Can't fall
under the social emotionalcategory, but they may also fall
under the cognitive difficulty,if they've got slow processing
speed or poor working memory ordifficulties like dyslexia or

(16:13):
dysgraphia, those are consideredcognitive difficulties that
might require a teacher to makeadjustments and provide support.
The funding is given in relationto four different levels of
support that range from justsmall amounts of support to
extensive amounts of support.
I think that the presentationthat Catholic Schools Paramatta

(16:36):
Diocese gave, said that most ofthese students who are
experiencing School Can't, arereceiving support from the NCCD
in the middle two categories.
So it's a supplementary level ora substantial level.

So level two or level three?

Yeah.
And it doesn't have to be adisability either that's being
supported.
It can be a mental healthcondition that's being
supported.

Right, so, key takeaways.
The NCCD is the organisationthat unlocks the funding to the
schools for additional support?

At a federal level.
Okay.
Each school system has fundingat state level as well.

And then you don't have to necessarily have a
diagnosis in order to unlockthat.
You can do the imputed diagnosisbased on observations of
behaviour over 10 weeks thatdon't have to be consecutive
over a period of 12 months.

It's about adjustments that are made.
So the things that need to berecorded are the things that the
school does to provide support.
So it's the staff member meetingsomebody at the school gate to
do a safe handover or, the staffmember sitting with a child in a
quiet room that can't sit in theclassroom or the needing of

(17:57):
assistive technology or theneeding of a teacher to reduce
the workload or alter the worksomehow so that it's more
accessible.
All of those sorts of things.
It's a whole range of things.

So if I follow that thread, that means that the
school has to be able to find away to fund that support in the
first instance for at least 10weeks in order to unlock the
funding to continue to supplyit.
Okay.
I can see why that might betricky for schools.

(18:29):
It's good to break it downbecause I think, a lot of us
come across these systems andpush backs against support and
just have no idea how themechanics work and just have to
take it at face value from theschool a lot of the time.
So just that greaterunderstanding is really helpful.
Shall we talk about the roundtables?
Switch gears a little bit..
Let's talk about the SchoolCan't Australia round table.

Sure.

Which was about terminology, you said
definitions and terminology.

Well there's a bunch of different terminology
that's used to describe schoolattendance difficulties.
The lived experience communityprefers the term School Can't,
but there's also terms likeEmotionally Based School
Avoidance, School Refusal,Barriers to Student Engagement
and Attendance.
Truancy.

Tiffany Westphal (she/h (19:17):
There's a lot out there.
And a lot of people, use SchoolRefusal because that's the
widely accepted terminology bothhere in Australia and overseas.
But there's been a lot ofpushback against that here in
Australia in particular, by thelived experience community.

Tho, I have heard some people who like it because
it's like being boundaried, likepushing back against something
that's not working for you.
But, I think in terms of the waywe use School Can't, we use it
because the body's having areaction and a response to
school because it perceivesattending school as unsafe.

(19:57):
So you're getting shut down,you're getting fight flight
reactions those are not thingsthat are in the control of a
young person.
Those are things that youngperson's body is doing,
depending on how safe they feel.

That kind of pushes back on the whole school
refusal as active resistance,isn't it?
Because I think we hear so manystories of kids who really,
really want to be at school, yetfor all of these other reasons,
like just cannot get there.
So it's not like, you know, I'mideologically opposed to school.
I'd love to be there, but

mm.

the circumstances make it
impossible.

But the language that we use shapes how we react
and respond.
So if we are thinking of it asrefusal, we're often thinking of
it as willfulness, ornon-compliance, and then if we
thinking of it as non-complianceor willfulness, we're gonna try
and incentivise behaviour anduse rewards whereas we know that

(20:56):
something's getting in the waythat's making it really hard for
that young person to be in anenvironment.
And so rewards don't addressthose underlying reasons.
Kids can feel really, reallystuck if they've got a problem
that it's just too big for themand they don't know how to deal
with it themselves.
And they don't know how to gethelp from their peers or from
their grownups about how to dealwith the thing that's bothering

(21:19):
them or the many things that arebothering them.
They don't know how to get helpfor that.
And then they're gettingrewards, that say, you know, we
want you to push through, orconsequences, you need to do
this thing without paying anyattention to why this thing is
hard for them.
it can really, make a youngperson feel stuck

More stressed.

and I'm expected to do this thing and I don't
know how to do this thing, youknow?
And it doesn't seem to be anavenue for me to get help and
assistance.

How was the conversation at the round table?
Were you speaking to truebelievers who nodded fiercely
and agreed with everything?

Not necessarily, no.

I think, people come to this with different
ideas about what to call thisthing, but they also say, your
community's experiences don'tnecessarily represent the
community that I'm from.
We've gotta have conversationswith different groups impacted
by school attendancedifficulties and be curious
about it.
and that's gonna be differentfor different people.

(22:26):
We hear that some people don'tfind value in education and
they're not interested in it.
And I think then we need to say,well, why, what about education
do you not have value in what,what is it about the way that we
do school, the things that weteach?
We've got to find out more aboutthe problem instead of just

(22:49):
making assumptions about whatthis group of people are feeling
and thinking.
We need to talk to them and havethose conversations, but in a
really safe way.
I think with the attendancemessaging, if we're sending this
message, education's important,and if you don't go to school,
you're gonna miss out on this,this, and this.

(23:10):
The people who are invested ineducation are gonna be really
impacted by that.
And the people who aren't, whoare disinterested in education
are not gonna care about that.
I'm not sure how you feel aboutthat, Tiffany.

it's complex and there's so much
diversity in the humanexperience.
I'm really familiar with thehuman experience that centers
around neurodivergent kids, andneurodivergent people.
in the school attendanceresearch space, there is still

(23:45):
not a lot of depth tounderstanding different
marginalized groups or, thenature of the lived experience
for those people, because thereare barriers to seeking student
voice.
It's really hard to interviewstudents about something that's
distressing without furthercausing them distress.

(24:07):
And so university ethicsdepartments are reluctant to
approve those sorts of researchprojects.
So there's a lack of studentvoice research that, that taps
into to student voice aboutexperiences.
So we're left to guess, and Ithink there's a lot to learn yet

(24:27):
about the lived experience ofyoung people who are out of home
care or

kids

from culturally and linguistically
diverse communities, and whattheir experiences are.
And I don't think that they'reall the same, the things that
cause them difficulty.
So yeah, I, I think we've got alot to learn yet.
I think that seeing it through astress lens though, is pretty
widely applicable to a lot ofdifferent groups.

I'd agree with that.

I was just gonna ask a question
'cause I haven't had a chance totalk to Lou about it yet.
What did you make Lou, of theconcern that School Can't might
be adopted as an identity by astudent who does a, I'm a School
Can't kid.
And whether or not that's adetrimental thing.
That was one of the concernsthat was shared I've been
reflecting on that since theconference.

(25:21):
There's a lot of reluctance Ithink in concern around students
labeling themselves and whatthat means.
I can remember when my firstchild was diagnosed autistic.
There was great concern in thefamily about the label autism
and autistic.
It was very stigmatized and ittook a long time to push back

(25:43):
against that stigma.
I don't know how I feel aboutthis,

this assumption that if once you've adopted that
label, you are then going tohave a reduced capacity to
achieve your potential becauseyou're not gonna try as hard.

I've been thinking a lot about what
happens when you don't give kidsa label.
They make up their own labelsfor things.
They make up their ownconclusions about the reasons
and the meanings for things.
And sometimes that's nothelpful.
Seeing myself just as a bad kidor somebody who's not good at

(26:18):
school or, you know, there's alot of internalized shame
messages get plugged in to thatspace.
Whereas I think having aconceptual framework for young
people that says, I'm a kid whohas a really hard time with
school because of a mismatch inmy needs, my capacity and the

(26:43):
demands that are placed on me atschool.
I think that's a much moreempowering position to be in,
you know, that says this is whatI need, this is what I don't get
in this environment, or how thisenvironment hurts me or causes
me stress.

And it's not just me, it's other people are
like this as well.
It's not just me who's broken.

I think Can't partly it's a Can't yet.
It's a Can't at the moment.
But I also think that Can'topens the door to curiosity and
helps us flip that behaviournarrative so that now we can
drill down and unpack all thosethings upstream of Can't, that

(27:31):
are impacting capacity to go.
And then we get to the problemsolving and we identify those
things and we try and putsupports in place to address
those things, hopefully with theyoung person's collaboration so
they can get a say in what'sgoing on.

(27:52):
And then as we address thosethings, we learn that we can
change our situation with thehelp of grownups who are gonna
listen to us.
And we can start to learn someproblem solving.
That I can do something aboutthese things.
I can have some agency in mylife.

(28:17):
I can have some agency to makethis situation different.
So that my experiences can bebetter.
so I think it depends on whetheryou see Can't as, as a
self-limiting belief or the timewhen we stop and reflect and we

(28:40):
work with others to do somethingabout the things we find hard.

Shall we move on to talk a little bit about the
research presentation on theStudent Stress Investigations
work, Tiff.
Do you wanna tell us a littleabout that?

Maybe Louise can talk about it.

Tiffany's got this card set Student Stress
Investigation, and it's got anumber of different stressors
listed on each of the differentcards.
So one stressor per card.
And she uses this in herprofessional practice as a
social worker, and she getschildren to sort the cards.
So the things that, reallyimpact me, the things that

(29:22):
impact me slightly less and thethings that don't impact me at
all.
And then I think she takes thosefirst two decks and they look
around for the big things.
Top five big things, if youcould change anything in your
experience of education, whatwould the top five things be?

What was the purpose of the research?

So the Autism Center for Excellence
at Griffith University has usedthe cards to collect information
about the experiences of youngpeople who were both autistic
and ADHDers.
I think they interviewed 31students, and they collected
some really rich informationfrom these young people about

(30:06):
their experiences of school.
They've just done the initialanalysis of the, the
quantitative data, and they'relooking at the qualitative data
now.

So that would be trying to understand
collectively, what are thehighest impact stressors that
kids with autism and ADHD areexperiencing at school.
So that might become like highpriority areas for schools to
address potentially.

Yeah.
more than that though, I thinkit's informing the creation of
individual supports forstudents.
There's a lot of scope in termsof the implications for this
research.
you know, in part will help usunderstand the diversity of
experience.
So, I know from my use of thecards that students commonly
choose between 30 and 50 of thecards.

So the big takeaway from that is that
there's not necessarily any onething that could fix this.
It's like paper cuts galore.

Yeah.

It's like death by a thousand
papercuts.

These stressors are stacking, they're stacking
and there comes a point wherethat young person just doesn't
have capacity anymore.
It's too much.
So we've got to work with ayoung person to reduce those
stressors.
With every problem we solve,there is increased capacity.

I'm just stuck in a metaphor of the papercut
that broke the camel's back,but,

yeah.

now that I've said that, I can forget about it
Conscious that, uh, that thework on this research is still
in progress, hasn't beenpublished yet, I wonder, is
there maybe like one littlespoiler that you can potentially
give us from what they'velearned from the research that
might be, a bit unexpected forfolks?

look for me, I think the biggest thing is just
how many stressors the kids areexperiencing.
You know, it's suggesting thatwe need to think about designing
the educational experiencedifferently if we're gonna
support our young people goingforward.

They're kids who are having a hard time.
one of the most compassionatethings we can do is say to them,
look, you know, when we'rehelping them reframe and it
makes sense of their experienceis, I'm sorry you were having
such a hard time, we just didn'tknow all the things that were
causing you distress.

mm.

we see that if you could have fixed
this yourself, you would'vefixed it by now, but you don't
have the power to fix it.
And so that's our job as adults,to do something to make it
easier for you to protect yourmental health and wellbeing.
The sequence of talks was we hadthis presentation, by myself and
Raechel Smart about studentvoice.

(32:46):
Then Raechel gave a presentationabout her research into teacher
experiences, how schools talkabout non-attendance of autistic
students.
That was interesting.
That was followed by thepresentation by Kara and Kirsten
about parents' perspectives.
So we had these three differentperspectives, the student

(33:07):
perspective, the educatorperspective and the parent
perspective.
What was interesting aboutRaechel's presentation on the
teacher's perspectives was that,they see things differently.
They themselves are verystressed, and that colours that
they see things.
So the themes that Raecheluncovered were, school non

(33:29):
attendance is a barrier tolearning and connecting.
We don't understand why schoolisn't working for the young
person and we can't support themif they aren't here.
I'm sure I've heard we can'tsupport them if they aren't here
before So, her findings werethat, teachers are very focused
on school attendance as beingthe problem.

(33:51):
Whereas parents and cliniciansoften describe non-attendance as
a symptom of stress or distress,

I think, we need to point out our efforts to
finding out why they're notgoing to school in the first
place.
Because if we can address thedownstream problems before they
cause that much distress, thatthe child can't go to school
anymore, then potentially we'repreventing a lot more distress.

(34:24):
You've gotta nip it in the budwhen it happens.
But, at the same time, we've gotpeople saying, you've got to get
them back to school quicklybecause this is gonna skyrocket
and, but just getting somebodyback to school that's not
solving the problem,

There's a lot of confusion between
things that are causation andthings that are correlation or
co-occurring.
And we noticed early, you know,with AEROs presentation, there
was a slide there that, that waslabeled Causes of school
non-attendance but reallythere's no evidence to show that
some of the things that werelisted on that side were causes.

What were the kinds of things that they were
listing as causes, if youremember?

So causes of student absence.
I think, they broke it intothree different categories,
school factors, student factors,family factors.
To then say that these thingsare causes of student absence
and to label things like adversechildhood experiences, the age
or year level of a student,their mental health conditions,

(35:31):
any additional learning needs,and consider these things all as
causes of student absence.
I would say that they're maybethings that place a student at
risk of stress and experiencingschool attendance difficulties.

(35:52):
Labeling them as drivers ofstudent absence is assuming a
causation link.
I understand why they've putthese things in this list, you
know, age and year level.
We know that there's, thattransition to high school for
instance, often we see anincrease in School Can't
experience as a result of poortransition experiences.

(36:16):
So that's why age and yearlevels been noted as a cause of
student absence.
But I wouldn't say it's a cause.
The cause is the stress thatoccurs as a result of a poor
transition experience.
I think we are still lackingdeep understandings about
factors that contribute tostudent experiences of distress

(36:40):
and stress in relation to schooland disengagement from school.

Alright, I am going to attempt to land the
plane.
I wonder whether can each justshare some sort of takeaway
reflections of the couple ofdays that you spent at the
conference.

I think I was actually left feeling really
optimistic because, we have allcome together in this process of
raising the lived experiencevoice.
You know, this is gonna taketime and I think they are
listening.
This is an opportunity for us tobridge that gap between the

(37:24):
lived experience and theresearch and the policy.
It's gonna take some time, but aconference like this is a step
to bringing all those differentvoices together.

It's one that they're gonna have to
be intentional about though.
Because I don't think that quitegot it right yet.
And I, I hope that, this is astart.
This is the, the first of theseconferences.
This is a brand neworganisation.
I hope that they'll giveconsideration to who's on their
organising committee, and ensurethat lived experience voices

(38:00):
represented at that.
I'd also want to make sure that,at a high level in this
organisation, we have peoplerepresenting disability, people
representing the different,intersectional minority
community groups as well, whoare impacted by school
attendance difficulties.

(38:20):
So their voices are heard, andincluded, and that participation
in a conference like this feelssafe for them and that they feel
seen, and can contribute.
I'm really concerned that,internationally, you know, INSA
is not accessible for parentsand carers, and that we don't

(38:41):
yet have something parents andcarers can attend and really,
you know, have their voice cometogether, apart from within our
Facebook group, within our, ourpeer support group.
I'd love for the government tobe collecting better data.
I think that, you know, movingforward, unless you measure it,
you can't see it.

(39:04):
it's hard for others to perceivethat which remains invisible
because we've never bothered tocollect data about it.

yeah, it's like when you're the parent at the
school at home or stuck in thecar park, you think it's just
you or maybe there's one otherparent having difficulties, but
then you come into a group likeSchool Can't Australia, and see
it's thousands of us we start tosee the patterns and know, it's

(39:31):
not us.
There are barriers impacting ourkids and their capacity to
attend school that are outsideof our control.
We can talk with school aboutit.
We can educate ourselves abouttheir needs and advocate for
them at school.
We need to empower students totalk to their experiences, and

(39:53):
provide safe spaces so they feelcomfortable to talk to their
experiences and have a say inhow their experiences could be
improved.

Well, a little shout out to anybody who's
listening who might be in thepolicy space the conference
organising space, or theacademic space who feels a
little bit attacked by anythingthat's been said.
I think the main thing is to saywe are here to collaborate and
to work with you to try to solvethese problems together.
I would love to think that theyare listening, but, and on the

(40:27):
off chance, you are.
Speaking on behalf of Tiffanyand Lou, I know that you'd be
happy to reach out andcollaborate with anybody who
wants to help bring all thedifferent voices together.
On behalf of the community, Iwould like to say Tiffany and
Louise, thank you very much forrepresenting all of us in those
spaces.
We really appreciate the workthat you do.
Well, I hope you found thatconversation useful and

(40:49):
interesting, and I hope likeLouise, you too have some
optimism that all of thesedifferent groups coming together
and learning from each other canonly help but improve the
outcomes for our kids.
If you found this podcasthelpful, please do take a moment
to subscribe or give us a ratingor a review.
You will be our favourite peopleand it will really help us get
the podcast in front of morepeople who have School Can't

(41:11):
kids, and who haven't yet foundour community and all the
information and support that weshare.
If you have some feedback for usor a suggestion for a future
topic or speaker, or maybe youare inspired to share your own
lived experience story, pleasedrop me an email to
schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com.
I would love to hear from you.

(41:32):
If you are a parent or carer inAustralia and you are feeling
distressed, remember you cancall the Parent Helpline in your
state.
Unfortunately, this is only trueuntil the 31st of October in
Victoria as the Victoriangovernment is choosing to shut
down their state parent line,which is very disappointing.
I will update the scriptaccordingly after that date, and
I put a link to sign a petitionto protest this in the episode

(41:55):
notes if you are so inclined.
Thank you again for listening.
We will talk again soon.
Take care.

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#31 - Insights from the Australian Network for School Attendance Conference

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#31 - Insights from the Australian Network for School Attendance Conference