What is school refusal and who is at risk?

The reasons children struggle to attend school can be complex. Research suggests that risk factors can include psychological problems, socio-economic disadvantage and school environment problems like bullying.

While school refusal can be caused by problems at home or school, it's often associated with autism, ADHD and anxiety disorders.

Some of the ways experts and education departments say it can present are:

• Reluctance to get up on school mornings

• Tantrums or outbursts

• Repeated pleas to go home

• Frequent lateness or skipping of school

• Frequent requests to go to the sick bay

• Threats to harm themselves

Fundamentally it's where a child has trouble attending or remaining at school due to varying underlying stressors.

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Isn't it just wagging?

No.

Truancy involves children who typically conceal their absence from their parents and may show antisocial behaviours.

School refusal, on the other hand, is when parents know about their child's absence from school and have tried to get them to attend. The attendance issue is often due to distress.

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How many families is this affecting?

It's really hard to tell.

Deakin University researcher, Associate Professor Glenn Melvin, says one of the biggest issues with addressing school refusal is that we don't know how many young people it's impacting.

There is no comprehensive national data on school refusal because most states and territories are not tracking the reason kids are absent from school

"Departments of Education don't routinely collect this data, but this is critical data. It might be that the problem is much larger than we expect," Dr Melvin says.

Victoria is the only state that tracks school refusal numbers.

In 2021, 11,825 students were affected – but the Victorian government says this is a conservative estimate.

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How can I understand the issue better as a parent?

While no national resource exists to help parents dealing with school refusal, most state education departments have information available online.

In Australia, Monash University, University of Melbourne and Deakin University researchers have also created evidence-based parent resources for school refusal including a parenting guide and online modules for families.

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