If Attendance Mattered, schools Would Be Inclusive
Parents of Disabled children throughout NSW are currently dealing with a new wave of ableism and gaslighting from the Department of Education in the form of the ‘Attendance Matters’ campaign.
As part of the general push to generate concern about attendance, the campaign features large, stress-provoking signs attached to school gates and fences that use emotive language to describe attendance rates that fall under 100 per cent.
Image Description: An image sent to me by a parent, of a NSW Department of Education “attendance matters” campaign sign attached to a school gate. The sign is green and says “attend school every day”. It features emotive and sensationalist language such as “below 80% - destructive” and “80% - extreme impact”. It features a meandering roadmap with icons along the way featuring different aspects of school life.
The campaign has arisen from the DOE-led narrative that attendance is in crisis. Here’s the thing, though: it isn’t.
I’m dead serious. Don't believe the Department of Education hype- there is no attendance crisis in Australian schools.
According to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), school attendance has actually increased nationally from 2022 to 2023.
The ‘Attendance Matters’ campaign is undoubtedly political, not practical. It is a wonderfully timed distraction, post-Disability Royal Commission, from school inaccessibility and Australia's failure to fund inclusion.
It is also a neat way to blame shift: shifting the responsibility of systems to align with the UNCRPD away from them and covering this failure with a narrative about individual teachers, parents, and children failing to value education.
It is clever, but not that clever.
You know what also matters? International human rights law, specifically the right of disabled children to inclusive education.
Disabled children are not being kept away from schools by their parents not giving a stuff about school, by being inadequate parents, and by not “disciplining” enough. These are destructive, outdated myths and part of systemic aggression and discrimination toward families where a student has a Disability.
Children are not there because they cannot access the curriculum on an equal basis with their peers - because there is no money for their needs, insufficient training, and insufficient teachers to provide the inclusive environments they need to attend.
Schools would be far more inclusive and equipped to support attendance if attendance mattered.
The truth is, Disabled children are still the too-hard children nobody wants to pay for, and many wish would go back to the institutions from whence they came. Cough, cough, SSPs, cough. The next best thing, I guess? (NSW is notoriously a segregation-eager State and has a bad rep on inclusion for this reason, among others).
Brass tacks:
We will know the State of NSW actually cares about attendance when:
it funds public schools to the level of resourcing required to ensure schools are places where all children can learn and grow; and implements Universal Design in a proactive way, rather than a reactive and legalistic defence strategy of waiting to be sued for Disability Discrimination by litigant parents;
it trains teachers to the level required to educate Disabled children; and deeply reforms teaching practice so it is Disability-informed and responsive;
it implements the recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission; at cost to Government, and not teachers or students;
and when it pays teachers their worth so they don’t burn out and take Disabled students down with them - without then swiftly stealing from their school budgets in response to any pay rise.
Until that happens, I call b*llshit on this campaign.
Attendance matters to our families, and always has. But the foundation for attendance has to be built first. That costs money.
Spend it.
