Exploring and addressing young people’s needs across all facets of their life.
There is growing recognition that young people’s education cannot be separated from the wider circumstances of their lives. The COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, and sustained pressures on public services have made visible how interconnected issues—such as poverty, housing insecurity, health needs and service delays—shape school attendance and wellbeing (Burtonshaw & Dorrell, 2023).
Schools are working hard to provide enrichment, pastoral care, and even basic needs support through breakfast clubs, food banks and mentoring. Yet schools cannot meet these needs alone. Families often describe being passed between services, with no single agency holding responsibility. Long waits for assessments or support (CAMHS, SEND, social care) leave schools and families holding complex risk without the resources to respond (Children’s Commissioner, 2024; Teacher Wellbeing Index, 2024).
Attendance data reflects these inequalities: in 2022/23, while 21.2% of young people overall were persistently absent, this rose to 36.6% for those with EHCPs and 35.7% for young people on free school meals (DfE, 2023). For young people with probable mental health conditions, absence rates were more than triple those of their peers (NHS Digital, 2022).
Our understanding of the drivers behind school non-attendance has grown significantly in recent years and the terminology surrounding this has evolved as a result. The term ‘Emotionally based school non- attendance/avoidance’ (EBSA/EBSNA) was introduced with a recognition of the internal difficulties that young people are facing, intending to reflect a more compassionate approach and a reduction in stigma. Although well intentioned, young people have told us they dislike the term because it puts the onus on them, when the majority of those struggling report that it’s the environment that makes attending school difficult.
We can see that barriers to attendance are rarely the result of single causes. They emerge at the intersection of home, school, and wider society. Holistic support requires us to understand and respond to these interlinked factors.
As written in Mutual Understanding and Partnership and Timely Response, despite evident dedication and effort from schools to provide support for the wider challenges that many families face, it is not possible for schools to achieve this in isolation. There are some barriers to the effective implementation of holistic support due to overstretched and fragmented services working in silos rather than collaboratively:
Lack of integration and coordination between health, education, and social care means families often have to navigate multiple services independently.
Parents who took part in our research echo this:
Parents and carers have also consistently emphasised the interconnectedness of issues faced, highlighting that schools are often blamed for failures in other areas such as health or housing (Burtonshaw & Dorrell, 2023). Improved joined-up working across agencies would allow schools to focus on their expertise: education.
As Burtonshaw and Dorrell (2023) highlight:
Recent research following the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the interconnected and intersectional nature of school attendance barriers (Heyne et al., 2024; ImpactEd Evaluation, 2024). These barriers often overlap and compound, including factors such as mental health, SEND, poverty, bullying, racism, discrimination, and caring responsibilities (Shafan-Azhar & Bottomley, 2024). Young people facing inequality are more likely to miss school and less likely to access timely support.
On an individual level, attendance issues often reflect a complex interaction between school-based and wider environmental factors (Melvin, 2019). Within schools, challenges such as cuts to creative subjects, reduced SEN support, staff retention difficulties, and peer bullying can undermine a sense of belonging and lead to disengagement (McPherson et al., 2023; Toynbee, 2023). Simultaneously, systemic pressures—including poverty, poor housing, and delays in mental health or SEND services—place additional strain on families.
Young people describe this “pile up” of challenges:
Heyne et al., (2024) emphasise the need to rethink our approach to wider systemic issues beyond the young person and family, such as inequality, school structures and how learning is delivered.
While frameworks focused around “Emotionally Based School Avoidance” aim to be compassionate and recognise emotional drivers of non-attendance, if applied uncritically they can inadvertently frame school non-attendance as primarily caused by the young person’s internal difficulties (e.g., anxiety, mental health, low resilience, lack of motivation, or attachment issues). A within-child approach risks narrowing the lens, meaning that school environment, broader systemic and contextual factors can be overlooked.
A narrow perspective can inadvertently sideline the voices and lived experiences of young people and families and lead to one dimensional or less personalised interventions that fail to address underlying causes. Professionals may be less likely to explore the young person’s perspective on school culture, relationships, and wellbeing. This can undermine the effective development and implementation of co-produced plans tailored to the young person’s holistic needs. Solutions are less effective because they’re not grounded in what matters most to the young person.
At the same time, although this terminology was introduced to reduce stigma, within-child framing can still lead to subtle forms of blame. Families may feel judged as “overprotective” or “enabling” school non-attendance. Young people may internalise a sense of failure, shame or guilt if they’re positioned as the source of the problem. Teachers may also feel unsupported if systemic barriers are downplayed, increasing frustration and conflict.
Together these effects risk damaging trust between families, schools, and services, which is essential for holistic collaboration.
Research and lived experience highlight that attendance difficulties are rarely the problem in themselves. Instead, they are signals of wider unmet needs. To be effective, responses must be joined up, both within school systems and through multiagency collaboration be holistic: addressing challenges across school, home and community, and recognising how these layers interact and influence the child or young person’s school experiences.
Bronfenbrenner’s systems theory (1979) highlights how systems around young people are interlinked and shape their development (see illustration below). This model highlights the need to move away from thinking about attendance difficulties as a ‘within’ child factor and to instead think much more holistically. To be effective, responses must move from a ‘within child’ view of the problem to one that is broader: addressing challenges across school, home and community, to recognising how these layers (systems) around children and young people interact and influence their school experiences.
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. Diagram by Joel Gibbs based on Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological model Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. Diagram by Joel Gibbs based on… | Download Scientific Diagram (researchgate.net)
This understanding pushes us away from single-issue solutions. Improving attendance requires addressing multiple overlapping barriers together, not expecting a child to “push through” difficulties with no changes or recognition of what may be creating these barriers at an individual level, at home, school or their local community. Equipped with this ‘bigger picture’ understanding, we can generate meaningful and holistic support plans that are tailored to individual circumstances.
Using person-centred planning tools and resources such as the Early Identification of Needs Tool to involve young people and their families in exploring barriers more broadly helps to ensure challenges and barriers experienced in and outside school are fully captured.
Holistic approaches begin with listening (please also see Mutual Partnership and Understanding). Young people and families consistently emphasise that support works best when it is personalised, flexible, and co-produced. This means shifting the focus from “fixing the child” to adapting systems around them, recognising strengths as well as challenges.
As one young person put it:
Support must therefore be designed with these systems in mind, working across boundaries and putting lived experience at the centre.
Parents also highlight a lack of agency. While they are legally responsible for attendance, they often feel powerless when schools do not acknowledge or respond to their child’s difficulties. This imbalance can damage trust and collaboration.
Parents describe the emotional toll of punitive measures:
“We were fined when my child was in crisis. It made things worse, not better.”
Holistic, person-centred practice requires:
As the Centre for Mental Health (2024) notes, a coordinated, whole-family approach is far more effective at enabling regular attendance than sanction-based models.
Parents often describe being caught in a dilemma: should they prioritise school attendance or their child’s health and wellbeing? Seeing their child struggle can be hugely stressful, sometimes impacting family relationships and finances. This dilemma underscores why holistic approaches must consider the needs of the whole family.
Conclusions drawn from the ImpactEd Evaluation (2024) of over 30,000 children’s views in England similarly evidenced how barriers, like disadvantage and inequalities are overlapping, rather than isolated and distinct. The N8 Child of the North plan (Bond et al., 2024) calls for cross-service collaboration:
Schools play a vital role in fostering belonging, safety and positive relationships, but they cannot compensate for systemic challenges in health, housing, social care or income insecurity.
Parents echo this frustration with fragmented and under-resourced systems:
International and UK evidence reinforces that multi-agency, community-based support leads to better outcomes. Wraparound services addressing food insecurity, housing, transport, and health (Levine & Melnick, 2020) improve attendance because they tackle the root causes of absence.
Examples include:
These examples highlight the power of whole-family, joined-up approaches that move beyond seeing attendance as the responsibility of schools alone.
Holistic support requires shifting from fragmented, crisis-driven responses to joined-up, preventative approaches. To truly address attendance difficulties, we must recognise them as signals of wider unmet needs and commit to systemic, compassionate, and sustainable change.
Young people are more likely to attend and engage in education when they feel safe, connected and understood. Research consistently shows that a sense of belonging—through positive relationships with peers and staff, inclusive teaching, and flexible approaches—has a stronger link to attendance than sanctions or rewards (ImpactEd, 2024).
Place2Be and the University of Cambridge (2023) found that counselling and strengthening enjoyment of school reduced persistent absence, highlighting the importance of investing in mental health and wellbeing provision. Whole-school approaches, like Place2Be’s Whole-School Mental Health model, demonstrate how embedding wellbeing into school culture fosters resilience, engagement and regular attendance.
Belonging is not an “add-on”—it is the foundation of education.
Schools cannot solve systemic challenges in isolation. Young people’s needs sit across education, health, social care, and community services, so responses must be joined-up and multi-agency.
Evidence points to the value of local, co-ordinated teams:
Clear referral pathways and shared responsibilities are key. A single point of access for attendance-related support would help reduce duplication, delays and the stress families experience from repeatedly “retelling their story.”
Having clear processes in schools (joining up staff across attendance, SEND, pastoral and safeguarding responsibilities) and good communication systems with families can help to reduce the impact of fragmented services at an individual level.
Improving attendance requires tackling the wider inequalities that drive absence: poverty, housing insecurity, racism, long waits for mental health and SEND services, and pressures on the education workforce.
Shafan-Azhar & Bottomley (2024) highlight that young people who face inequalities are more likely to miss school and less likely to receive timely support. This calls for investment in accessible health and SEND services, action on child poverty, and workforce strategies to address teacher recruitment and retention. Local Authorities who use attendance data intelligently can target support more effectively (see Timely Response).
National policy also matters. Evidence suggests sanction-based approaches (such as fines and prosecutions) exacerbate stress and are counterproductive for families already under pressure (Mind, 2021; Shafan-Azhar & Bottomley, 2024). Shifting towards supportive, preventative strategies is therefore essential.
Removing systemic barriers allows schools to focus on education, rather than carrying the weight of wider system failures (Burtonshaw & Dorrell, 2023).
Young people and families hold unique insights into what helps and hinders attendance. Valuing these perspectives means moving from surface-level consultation to genuine co-production of support plans and policy.
Person-centred planning approaches, supported by tools that enable children to share their experiences in meaningful ways, ensure that solutions are tailored and not superficial. This recognises that difficulties are rarely captured by attendance data alone.
Focusing on engagement with education (rather than attendance as a number) shifts the question from “How do we get them through the door?” to “How do we make learning accessible, meaningful and safe?” For some young people, this may require flexible or individualised approaches in the short or longer term.
Finding a way forward means moving from crisis management to prevention, from blame to collaboration, and from short-term fixes to meaningful, sustainable support.
Holistic support requires:
Barnardo’s. (2024). Evaluation of the attendance mentors pilot: Year 1 findings. Department for Education. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65fb20d3703c423c5158ef03/Evaluation_of_the_attendance_mentors_pilot_-_Year_1_findings.pdf
Bond, C., Munford, R., Birks, M., Shobande, O., Denny, S., Hatton-Corcoran, R., Qualter, P., & Wood, C. (2024). Child of the North: Education and health inequalities plan. N8 Research Partnership.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press.
Burtonshaw, C., & Dorrell, J. (2023). Engaging parents in education: A whole-school approach. Routledge.
Centre for Mental Health. (2024). Whole-family approaches to school attendance. Centre for Mental Health.
Child of the North. (2024). Children at the margins: Addressing attendance barriers in the North. Health Equity North & N8 Research Partnership. https://www.n8research.org.uk
Children’s Commissioner. (2024). Over a quarter of a million children still waiting for mental health support. Children’s Commissioner for England. https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk
ImpactEd Evaluation. (2024). Understanding attendance: Using data to inform practice. ImpactEd. https://impacted.org.uk/resources
Levine, P., & Melnick, H. (2020). Community schools: Building strong systems to address attendance barriers. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org
Mind. (2021). Not making the grade: Why punitive attendance policies harm mental health. Mind. https://www.mind.org.uk
NHS Digital. (2022). Mental health of children and young people in England 2022: Wave 3 follow up. NHS Digital. https://digital.nhs.uk
Place2Be, & University of Cambridge. (2023). Counselling provision and persistent absence: Evidence from whole-school interventions. Place2Be.
Shafan-Azhar, T., & Bottomley, J. (2024). Schools and parents: Building relational trust. Routledge.
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