The School Can't Experience

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

• School Can't Australia • Season 1 • Episode 31

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In this episode of the School Can't Experience Podcast, host Leisa Reichelt discusses the recent Australian Network for School Attendance Conference with Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers from School Can't Australia. 

They share valuable insights and highlights from the event, discussing various topics such as the impact of stressors on student attendance, the importance of lived experience in shaping policies, and the complexities surrounding school attendance difficulties. 

They explore the terminology used to describe school attendance issues, how schools can use imputed diagnosis to access NCCD funding, and gaps in the perspectives of students, educators, and parents. 

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The content of this podcast is based on personal lived experiences and is shared for informational and storytelling purposes only. It should not be treated as medical, psychological, or professional advice under any circumstances. If you have concerns about your health or well-being, please seek guidance from a doctor, therapist, or other qualified professional.

Leisa Reichelt:

Hello and welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast. I'm Leisa Reichelt, and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia community. Caring for a young person who is struggling to attend school can be a stressful and isolating experience, but you are not alone. Thousands of parents across Australia and many more around the world face similar challenges and experiences every day. So we have something a little different today, which is a debrief of the recent Australian Network for School Attendance conference, which most of us were unable to attend and probably didn't even know existed. This was an opportunity for all kinds of stakeholders involved in school attendance in Australia to come together, listen and learn from each other, whether they be educators, academics, or people with lived experience. Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers from School Can't Australia attended and participated in the conference on our behalf, and they were very keen to come back and share with you all what they had learned and observed. This isn't an academic conversation. It covers a wide range of topics, some of which are super practical, and others are just really thought provoking. I hope you enjoy it. Okay. Let's start by giving folks some context as to why we're gathered here today. We have Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers from School Can't Australia with us, and they have recently attended an interesting conference. And we wanted to come together and talk about what they saw and heard at the conference, and their reflections on that, as well as the presentations that Tiff and Lou did there. So welcome to you both.

Louise Rogers:

Thank you.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

Okay, so we went to the Australian Network for School Attendance Conference. It was held on the 4th and 5th of September. And, so it was an academic conference, but it brought together people who research attendance with people who have lived experience, and also educators and people who are in government. Anyone who's kind of interested in school attendance.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

So we had heads of attendance teams from a couple different States.

Leisa Reichelt:

Government folk?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah. People from AERO, from Gratin Institute, from, a number of different places.

Leisa Reichelt:

Just define who's AERO?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Australian Education Research Organisation. Its a government funded research. One of the big four organisations that the Federal Education Minister's thinking about rolling together.

Leisa Reichelt:

Interesting. You guys were there to help represent the lived experience?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

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

Louise Rogers:

We held a round table about the terminology we use to talk about school attendance. And Tiffany presented some research she's been doing with Griffith University, or so I should say co-presented that research, using a tool she's developed called the Student Stress Investigation. And, we met up with researchers with whom we have been working. There's been a, a new paper come out, a conceptual paper, all about the term School Can't and why we use that term.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

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

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

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

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

I really liked the start of day two, which was when lived experience presenters started talking and taking stage. There was a young woman with her mum, and she was talking to her experience of school attendance difficulties when she was at school. There was a young indigenous woman also talking about her experiences at school, and, a mum who'd been talking about supporting her children at school. And I think for me it was very validating to hear those stories because we weren't connected to those presenters. And it was lovely to hear their language and their framing reflected very much what I think we have experienced ourselves in the context of our community.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

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

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Well, you see, the first day got off to a really shaky start. When we heard from AERO, I think that was quite a triggering, presentation for us to sit through. The AERO research has some big things missing. There was no recognition of disability and when questioned the reason disability didn't come up in AERO's research report was that ACARA doesn't collect any data about students with disability. So there was nothing for them to analyze. And, it really wasn't till the last slide where Dr. Olivia Groves asked what are the links between system level factors and attendance and what works for diverse student groups as being questions for further research. I was also pretty dismayed to hear that they had not had time given to them to consult with community either. And so they went to experts.

Leisa Reichelt:

What kind of experts did they talk to?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

So academics who work in the attendance space, in Australia and overseas as well. I think for the indigenous community, there was some stuff there and I heard in AERO's report, a lot of really good stuff in relation to support for indigenous students. And there was a part of me that felt they used the same lens, they used to look at students who are indigenous, and use that same framework applied to students with disability. It could have been a really great thing.,

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

It's the absence of recognition that, you know, we know that's about 70 to 80% of our parent carer population at School Can't Australia is caring for students who are neurodivergent, who are autistic or ADHD most commonly. And so to not have their experiences represented at the level of the Australian Education Research organisation was pretty disappointing for us.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

It's not only the opportunity for data capture, though, it's also they could use that messaging in a completely different way that, you know, instead of saying attendance counts and all these bad things are gonna happen the more days you miss, What a difference that would make in the messaging. If we turned it around and made it an invitation, come and talk to us. We are here and we are here to support you and your child in their education. What can we do?

Leisa Reichelt:

Indeed. Okay. So AERO report missed the mark in terms of what you might have hoped would come from the insight. What else was happening on day one?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Amy Meade looked at a longitudinal study of Australian children. Growing up in Australia was the name of the study. Started in 2003. It followed approximately 10,000 children, in two cohorts. They collected data every two years, about health and wellbeing, home environment, experiences at school, classroom practices, and neighborhood characteristics. She was looking at establishing the prevalence of, School Can't in Australian students. and What are the characteristics associated with greater risk of experiencing School Can't? There's very limited longitudinal data and there aren't very many longitudinal studies looking into experiences of School Can't either. So I was curious to hear about the findings. I don't think they're finished yet but the first challenge that Amy talked about was being able to identify information from the data that was collected that might indicate a student was experiencing School Can't, because that wasn't something they explicitly measured. And they looked at it over time, approximately a bit more than 75% of students experienced School Can't, in a single episode. With, smaller and smaller prevalence, for kids who are experiencing it, know, four or five episodes over the study.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I don't know.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yep. They got some data on bullying. So there's a clear, relationship between the experience of being bullied in the past 12 months and school refusal. There's also a relationship between having friends at school and School Can't. So having at least one friend seemed to be a protective factor. There were three findings she finished her presentation with. One was that the pre COVID 19 prevalence was perhaps higher than indicated by prior estimates. Another finding was that depression, anxiety, autism, and ADHD are all very highly represented in impacted students. And that we perhaps need to consider how these students can be better supported. And also that we, you know, in terms of bullying, we need to seek ways to address bullying, look for opportunities to establish peer connections and friendships, especially in upper primary and lower secondary.

Leisa Reichelt:

Any other highlights from day one?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

We got to hear from the Catholic Schools Parramatta Diocese, There was some encouraging stuff presented by Mel Franciscus, who talked about the intersection between school attendance and disability. Louise and I both sat there going, oh, this all sounds very familiar and, and really great that they're thinking along these lines. There were a few interesting things when they're talking about responses to school attendance difficulties, schools talk about multi-tiered systems of support. the multi-tiered system of support level one is an intervention that everybody benefits from, and then as you go up the scale. Level two is supports that are provided to smaller groups of students. Support at a level three is provided usually one-on-one to a student who's experiencing acute distress. And it was interesting when they looked at the number of students referred to the service for tier three attendance support. 48% of those had a diagnosis and 22% had an imputed diagnosis.

Leisa Reichelt:

What's an imputed diagnosis, Tiff?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

So, under the National Consistent Collection of Data, the NCCD, is a funding program from the federal government that allows schools to impute a diagnosis. So what that means is that they're able to say this student needs supports, and regardless of whether they have a diagnosis or not, we can impute a diagnosis and then register that with the NCCD, and provide supports.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

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

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

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

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

It's helpful for people to know some stuff about the NCCD. So when you have a kid who can't go to school, sometimes they say to you, well, we can't apply for funding under the NCCD because they're not at school. But they only have to have 10 weeks worth of documented adjustments made anytime in the previous 12 months I think it is. So it doesn't have to be the most recent 10 weeks. And it doesn't have to be a continuous 10 weeks either. And lots of schools don't realize that they think that, because the kid's not at school now, and hasn't been for 10 weeks, they can't be registered for the NCCD. There's lots of great information on the NCCD website, that's accessible for parents and carers. So you can go and do some research. Under the NCCD there are, I think three different categories. So there's supports provided that support a student who's experiencing cognitive difficulties, supports provided when a student is experiencing physical difficulties, physical disability, and then also, for those who are experiencing social emotional difficulties. Now, most of us who have kids experiencing School Can't fall under the social emotional category, but they may also fall under the cognitive difficulty, if they've got slow processing speed or poor working memory or difficulties like dyslexia or dysgraphia, those are considered cognitive difficulties that might require a teacher to make adjustments and provide support. The funding is given in relation to four different levels of support that range from just small amounts of support to extensive amounts of support. I think that the presentation that Catholic Schools Paramatta Diocese gave, said that most of these students who are experiencing School Can't, are receiving support from the NCCD in the middle two categories. So it's a supplementary level or a substantial level.

Leisa Reichelt:

So level two or level three?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah. And it doesn't have to be a disability either that's being supported. It can be a mental health condition that's being supported.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

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

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

It's about adjustments that are made. So the things that need to be recorded are the things that the school does to provide support. So it's the staff member meeting somebody at the school gate to do a safe handover or, the staff member sitting with a child in a quiet room that can't sit in the classroom or the needing of assistive technology or the needing of a teacher to reduce the workload or alter the work somehow so that it's more accessible. All of those sorts of things. It's a whole range of things.

Leisa Reichelt:

So if I follow that thread, that means that the school has to be able to find a way to fund that support in the first instance for at least 10 weeks in order to unlock the funding to continue to supply it. Okay. I can see why that might be tricky for schools. It's good to break it down because I think, a lot of us come across these systems and push backs against support and just have no idea how the mechanics work and just have to take it at face value from the school a lot of the time. So just that greater understanding is really helpful. Shall we talk about the round tables? Switch gears a little bit.. Let's talk about the School Can't Australia round table.

Louise Rogers:

Sure.

Leisa Reichelt:

Which was about terminology, you said definitions and terminology.

Louise Rogers:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

There's a lot out there. And a lot of people, use School Refusal because that's the widely accepted terminology both here in Australia and overseas. But there's been a lot of pushback against that here in Australia in particular, by the lived experience community.

Louise Rogers:

Tho, I have heard some people who like it because it's like being boundaried, like pushing back against something that's not working for you. But, I think in terms of the way we use School Can't, we use it because the body's having a reaction and a response to school because it perceives attending school as unsafe. So you're getting shut down, you're getting fight flight reactions those are not things that are in the control of a young person. Those are things that young person's body is doing, depending on how safe they feel.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

mm.

Leisa Reichelt:

the circumstances make it impossible.

Louise Rogers:

But the language that we use shapes how we react and respond. So if we are thinking of it as refusal, we're often thinking of it as willfulness, or non-compliance, and then if we thinking of it as non-compliance or willfulness, we're gonna try and incentivise behaviour and use rewards whereas we know that something's getting in the way that's making it really hard for that young person to be in an environment. And so rewards don't address those underlying reasons. Kids can feel really, really stuck if they've got a problem that it's just too big for them and they don't know how to deal with it themselves. And they don't know how to get help from their peers or from their grownups about how to deal with the thing that's bothering them or the many things that are bothering them. They don't know how to get help for that. And then they're getting rewards, that say, you know, we want you to push through, or consequences, you need to do this thing without paying any attention to why this thing is hard for them. it can really, make a young person feel stuck

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

More stressed.

Louise Rogers:

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

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Not necessarily, no.

Louise Rogers:

I think, people come to this with different ideas about what to call this thing, but they also say, your community's experiences don't necessarily represent the community that I'm from. We've gotta have conversations with different groups impacted by school attendance difficulties and be curious about it. and that's gonna be different for different people. We hear that some people don't find 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 we teach? We've got to find out more about the problem instead of just making assumptions about what this group of people are feeling and thinking. We need to talk to them and have those conversations, but in a really safe way. I think with the attendance messaging, 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. The people who are invested in education are gonna be really impacted by that. And the people who aren't, who are disinterested in education are not gonna care about that. I'm not sure how you feel about that, Tiffany.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

it's complex and there's so much diversity in the human experience. I'm really familiar with the human experience that centers around neurodivergent kids, and neurodivergent people. in the school attendance research space, there is still not a lot of depth to understanding different marginalized groups or, the nature of the lived experience for those people, because there are barriers to seeking student voice. It's really hard to interview students about something that's distressing without further causing them distress. And so university ethics departments are reluctant to approve those sorts of research projects. So there's a lack of student voice research that, that taps into to student voice about experiences. So we're left to guess, and I think there's a lot to learn yet about the lived experience of young people who are out of home care or

Louise Rogers:

kids

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and what their experiences are. And I don't think that they're all the same, the things that cause them difficulty. So yeah, I, I think we've got a lot to learn yet. I think that seeing it through a stress lens though, is pretty widely applicable to a lot of different groups.

Louise Rogers:

I'd agree with that.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I was just gonna ask a question'cause I haven't had a chance to talk to Lou about it yet. What did you make Lou, of the concern that School Can't might be adopted as an identity by a student who does a, I'm a School Can't kid. And whether or not that's a detrimental thing. That was one of the concerns that was shared I've been reflecting on that since the conference. There's a lot of reluctance I think in concern around students labeling themselves and what that means. I can remember when my first child was diagnosed autistic. There was great concern in the family about the label autism and autistic. It was very stigmatized and it took a long time to push back against that stigma. I don't know how I feel about this,

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

I've been thinking a lot about what happens when you don't give kids a label. They make up their own labels for things. They make up their own conclusions about the reasons and the meanings for things. And sometimes that's not helpful. Seeing myself just as a bad kid or somebody who's not good at school or, you know, there's a lot of internalized shame messages get plugged in to that space. Whereas I think having a conceptual framework for young people that says, I'm a kid who has a really hard time with school because of a mismatch in my needs, my capacity and the demands that are placed on me at school. I think that's a much more empowering position to be in, you know, that says this is what I need, this is what I don't get in this environment, or how this environment hurts me or causes me stress.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

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't opens the door to curiosity and helps us flip that behaviour narrative so that now we can drill down and unpack all those things upstream of Can't, that are impacting capacity to go. And then we get to the problem solving and we identify those things and we try and put supports in place to address those things, hopefully with the young person's collaboration so they can get a say in what's going on. And then as we address those things, we learn that we can change our situation with the help of grownups who are gonna listen to us. And we can start to learn some problem solving. That I can do something about these things. I can have some agency in my life. I can have some agency to make this situation different. So that my experiences can be better. so I think it depends on whether you see Can't as, as a self-limiting belief or the time when we stop and reflect and we work with others to do something about the things we find hard.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Maybe Louise can talk about it.

Louise Rogers:

Tiffany's got this card set Student Stress Investigation, and it's got a number of different stressors listed on each of the different cards. So one stressor per card. And she uses this in her professional practice as a social worker, and she gets children to sort the cards. So the things that, really impact me, the things that impact me slightly less and the things that don't impact me at all. And then I think she takes those first two decks and they look around for the big things. Top five big things, if you could change anything in your experience of education, what would the top five things be?

Leisa Reichelt:

What was the purpose of the research?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

So the Autism Center for Excellence at Griffith University has used the cards to collect information about the experiences of young people who were both autistic and ADHDers. I think they interviewed 31 students, and they collected some really rich information from these young people about their experiences of school. They've just done the initial analysis of the, the quantitative data, and they're looking at the qualitative data now.

Leisa Reichelt:

So that would be trying to understand collectively, what are the highest impact stressors that kids with autism and ADHD are experiencing at school. So that might become like high priority areas for schools to address potentially.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

Yeah. more than that though, I think it's informing the creation of individual supports for students. There's a lot of scope in terms of the implications for this research. you know, in part will help us understand the diversity of experience. So, I know from my use of the cards that students commonly choose between 30 and 50 of the cards.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

It's like death by a thousand papercuts.

Louise Rogers:

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

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

yeah.

Leisa Reichelt:

now that I've said that, I can forget about it Conscious that, uh, that the work on this research is still in progress, hasn't been published yet, I wonder, is there maybe like one little spoiler that you can potentially give us from what they've learned from the research that might be, a bit unexpected for folks?

Louise Rogers:

look for me, I think the biggest thing is just how many stressors the kids are experiencing. You know, it's suggesting that we need to think about designing the educational experience differently if we're gonna support our young people going forward.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

They're kids who are having a hard time. one of the most compassionate things we can do is say to them, look, you know, when we're helping them reframe and it makes sense of their experience is, I'm sorry you were having such a hard time, we just didn't know all the things that were causing you distress.

Louise Rogers:

mm.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

we see that if you could have fixed this yourself, you would've fixed 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 your mental health and wellbeing. The sequence of talks was we had this presentation, by myself and Raechel Smart about student voice. Then Raechel gave a presentation about her research into teacher experiences, how schools talk about non-attendance of autistic students. That was interesting. That was followed by the presentation by Kara and Kirsten about parents' perspectives. So we had these three different perspectives, the student perspective, the educator perspective and the parent perspective. What was interesting about Raechel's presentation on the teacher's perspectives was that, they see things differently. They themselves are very stressed, and that colours that they see things. So the themes that Raechel uncovered were, school non attendance is a barrier to learning and connecting. We don't understand why school isn't working for the young person and we can't support them if they aren't here. I'm sure I've heard we can't support them if they aren't here before So, her findings were that, teachers are very focused on school attendance as being the problem. Whereas parents and clinicians often describe non-attendance as a symptom of stress or distress,

Louise Rogers:

I think, we need to point out our efforts to finding out why they're not going to school in the first place. Because if we can address the downstream problems before they cause that much distress, that the child can't go to school anymore, then potentially we're preventing a lot more distress. You've gotta nip it in the bud when it happens. But, at the same time, we've got people saying, you've got to get them back to school quickly because this is gonna skyrocket and, but just getting somebody back to school that's not solving the problem,

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

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

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

So causes of student absence. I think, they broke it into three different categories, school factors, student factors, family factors. To then say that these things are causes of student absence and to label things like adverse childhood experiences, the age or year level of a student, their mental health conditions, any additional learning needs, and consider these things all as causes of student absence. I would say that they're maybe things that place a student at risk of stress and experiencing school attendance difficulties. Labeling them as drivers of student absence is assuming a causation link. I understand why they've put these things in this list, you know, age and year level. We know that there's, that transition to high school for instance, often we see an increase in School Can't experience as a result of poor transition experiences. So that's why age and year levels been noted as a cause of student absence. But I wouldn't say it's a cause. The cause is the stress that occurs as a result of a poor transition experience. I think we are still lacking deep understandings about factors that contribute to student experiences of distress and stress in relation to school and disengagement from school.

Leisa Reichelt:

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

Louise Rogers:

I think I was actually left feeling really optimistic because, we have all come together in this process of raising the lived experience voice. You know, this is gonna take time and I think they are listening. This is an opportunity for us to bridge that gap between the lived experience and the research and the policy. It's gonna take some time, but a conference like this is a step to bringing all those different voices together.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her):

It's one that they're gonna have to be intentional about though. Because I don't think that quite got it right yet. And I, I hope that, this is a start. This is the, the first of these conferences. This is a brand new organisation. I hope that they'll give consideration to who's on their organising committee, and ensure that lived experience voices represented at that. I'd also want to make sure that, at a high level in this organisation, we have people representing disability, people representing the different, intersectional minority community groups as well, who are impacted by school attendance difficulties. So their voices are heard, and included, and that participation in a conference like this feels safe for them and that they feel seen, and can contribute. I'm really concerned that, internationally, you know, INSA is not accessible for parents and carers, and that we don't yet have something parents and carers can attend and really, you know, have their voice come together, apart from within our Facebook group, within our, our peer support group. I'd love for the government to be collecting better data. I think that, you know, moving forward, unless you measure it, you can't see it. it's hard for others to perceive that which remains invisible because we've never bothered to collect data about it.

Louise Rogers:

yeah, it's like when you're the parent at the school at home or stuck in the car park, you think it's just you or maybe there's one other parent having difficulties, but then you come into a group like School Can't Australia, and see it's thousands of us we start to see the patterns and know, it's not us. There are barriers impacting our kids and their capacity to attend school that are outside of our control. We can talk with school about it. We can educate ourselves about their needs and advocate for them at school. We need to empower students to talk to their experiences, and provide safe spaces so they feel comfortable to talk to their experiences and have a say in how their experiences could be improved.

Leisa Reichelt:

Well, a little shout out to anybody who's listening who might be in the policy space the conference organising space, or the academic space who feels a little bit attacked by anything that's been said. I think the main thing is to say we are here to collaborate and to work with you to try to solve these problems together. I would love to think that they are listening, but, and on the off chance, you are. Speaking on behalf of Tiffany and Lou, I know that you'd be happy to reach out and collaborate with anybody who wants to help bring all the different voices together. On behalf of the community, I would like to say Tiffany and Louise, thank you very much for representing all of us in those spaces. We really appreciate the work that you do. Well, I hope you found that conversation useful and interesting, and I hope like Louise, you too have some optimism that all of these different groups coming together and learning from each other can only help but improve the outcomes for our kids. If you found this podcast helpful, please do take a moment to subscribe or give us a rating or a review. You will be our favourite people and it will really help us get the podcast in front of more people who have School Can't kids, and who haven't yet found our community and all the information and support that we share. If you have some feedback for us or a suggestion for a future topic or speaker, or maybe you are inspired to share your own lived experience story, please drop me an email to schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you. If you are a parent or carer in Australia and you are feeling distressed, remember you can call the Parent Helpline in your state. Unfortunately, this is only true until the 31st of October in Victoria as the Victorian government is choosing to shut down their state parent line, which is very disappointing. I will update the script accordingly after that date, and I put a link to sign a petition to protest this in the episode notes if you are so inclined. Thank you again for listening. We will talk again soon. Take care.