The Inside of EBSA
What is behind emotionally based school avoidance? Here's what young people tell me.
I’ve been talking to young people who have struggled with school attendance. Sometimes called school refusers, or phobics, or those with emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA). They tell me stories of what happened to them at school - and all of them tell me about about controlling environments which caused them high levels of distress.
An eight year old told me that she had to get 15 house points a week and so she worried every time she was ill - not in school, then no chance to get house points. To get a £5 book token in assembly, you had to do 9 weeks straight of 15 points. She worried about it at home and worried about it at school. She was so worried that sometimes she couldn’t go in. She’s not at that school anymore.
A fifteen year old told me of her school’s C-point system. Two C-points a day and you’re in detention, three and you’re in isolation. And, she told me, you could get them for things you did by accident. If your pen broke and you’d lent your spare to a friend, or if your clip-on tie fell off. She was perfectly behaved, worried all the time about forgetting her equipment and went for the whole of Y7 with no points at all. Her prize? A meal at Pizza Express. She doesn’t go to school anymore.
Another girl told me how her headteacher made the things which made school manageable for her - breaks to move around, calm spaces to go - rewards for good behaviour. At the same time, she introduced an isolation bench where the ‘badly behaved’ kids had to sit whilst everyone else walked past them to the playground. She became unable to talk at school and started having panic attacks. She doesn’t go to school anymore.
All of these girls were well behaved. None of them were disruptive. All of them were so distressed that their parents felt they had no choice but to remove them from those schools.
The way we treat our young people matters. High control environments cause distress. They look peaceful, but in those quiet corridors there are children giving way under the pressure. Even the ones for whom it seems like it ‘works’. They are bending under the pressure and then we are blaming them.
They need something much better than this. We all need something better.
Once you can’t go anymore, it’s like falling into the abyss. No one helps you find a new path & all sense of any community & support falls away. You’re on your own trying to navigate a sinking ship & of course many do sink.
There’s a huge lack of accomodations in schools & a huge lack of support once you’ve had to leave mainstream. This isn’t right. All kids are capable & desire a learning path & should be feeling supported. Not all parents understand this journey either so it only compounds the problem further. Kids can lose the school, family & friends in their corner. So much trauma. They need a future too. They are worthy of the same opportunities afforded to those in mainstream only it needs to be packaged differently. So much more needs to be done in this space.