School Refusal: Why We Must Stop Punishing Children for a System That’s Failing Them

As children and young people across the country head back to school this month, millions of families are facing a reality far removed from the cheerful “back to school” imagery that fills our shops and social media feeds. For many parents, the return to school brings anxiety rather than excitement – the dread of another year battling school refusal; the fear of escalating fines and legal action for low attendance; the heartbreak of watching their child suffer.

When parents have to carry their children out of the house because they’re terrified of going to school; when children hide in cars to avoid the journey; when they stop speaking entirely because attending lessons feels impossibly stressful – these aren’t the actions of difficult children. These are desperate signals from young people telling us that our education system is not meeting their needs because it is fundamentally broken.

Across the country, families are experiencing the stark reality of Britain’s escalating school refusal crisis. Across England, 1.28 million children – nearly 18% of all pupils – were persistently absent in autumn 2024. While this represents a decrease from the previous year’s 19.4%, it remains astoundingly high compared to pre-pandemic levels of nearly 11%. We’re not dealing with a temporary blip; we’re witnessing the symptoms of systemic failure.

The current response to school refusal reveals a profound misunderstanding of the problem. Parents face fines, court proceedings, and social services investigations. Children are labelled as school refusers, truants, or problem cases. Yet school refusal is rarely about defiance – it’s often about survival.

For many children, the traditional classroom environment isn’t just challenging – it’s genuinely harmful. The sensory overload of 30-plus children in a small space, the rigid adherence to schedules that ignore individual needs, the relentless focus on standardised testing and comparison all represent daily assaults on wellbeing.

The impact extends far beyond missed lessons. Families find themselves navigating endless appointments with support workers, therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Everyone’s mental health deteriorates as they battle not just school refusal, but a system that seems designed to pathologise rather than accommodate and enable difference.

Our education system operates on a fundamental misconception: that all children learn the same way, at the same pace, in the same environment. This industrial model of schooling, designed for a bygone era, persists despite overwhelming evidence that human brains are wonderfully diverse.

The education system has become obsessed with measuring everything while forgetting that success can be an intrinsic thing best measured by observation that a child is thriving. When we force square pegs into round holes, we shouldn’t be surprised when the pegs break.

The crisis extends beyond special educational needs. Even neurotypical children are struggling with the pressure-cooker environment of modern schooling. Many families report children whose childhoods are racing by in a blur of revision and comparison. We’re creating a generation of anxious, stressed young people who’ve learned that compliance is more valued than thinking.

While our mainstream system struggles with rising absence and  declining wellbeing, alternative approaches like authentic Montessori education offer compelling evidence that school can be different. Research consistently demonstrates that Montessori-educated children show higher levels of wellbeing, stronger executive function, good academics, and have more positive school experiences.

A landmark study published in 2021 found that adults who attended Montessori schools for at least two years in childhood reported significantly higher wellbeing decades later. The child-centred approach, which allows children to choose their own work, learn at their own pace, and engage in meaningful activities, creates an environment where learning flourishes naturally.

At London’s Maria Montessori School, where children can attend from two and a half to 16 years, this philosophy translates into tangible outcomes. School refusal is simply not a “thing”. Parents report transformative changes in their children’s relationship with learning.

The testimonials are striking in their consistency. One parent describes a complete transformation: “Coming from the traditional system, and being wounded from his time there, our son has grown back trust in his teachers in a matter of weeks. He now LOVES school (weekends are too long!), and runs in the morning vs screaming and desperately crying everyday before… He’s found a safe and nourishing place, where he feels he belongs, and he is flourishing.”

This pattern of children moving from distress to joy is repeated again and again. Parents describe children who are “happy, independent, curious and self-motivated”, and families have relocated to London specifically because their child is “madly in love with his school”. One mother reflects: “My child is finally happy and serene at school”.

Parents perhaps most powerfully speak of the relief of finding the right fit: “If you’re like me, and you know deep inside that the school your child is at right now isn’t fulfilling their needs / nourishing them, just trust yourself, and take the leap! I only wish I did it quicker, being in the right school has changed everything for our entire family”.

The Montessori approach challenges our narrow definitions of educational success. Rather than focusing solely on standardised academic test scores, it recognises that true education develops the whole child – their creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and intrinsic motivation to learn.

This holistic view is supported by neuroscientific research showing that stress and anxiety actively impede learning. When children feel safe, respected, and understood, their brains are freed for discovery and growth. When they feel constantly judged and compared, their nervous systems shift into survival mode, making genuine learning nearly impossible.

It seems unlikely that the school refusal crisis will be solved by fining parents or forcing children back into environments that threaten their mental well-being. Instead, we need fundamental reform that recognises and accommodates the diversity of human needs.

This means expanding access to alternative approaches like authentic Montessori education. It means properly training teachers and support staff to understand different learning needs and implement approaches that support these.

Most urgently, it means stopping the criminalisation of families who are already struggling. When a parent makes the difficult decision to keep their child at home, they deserve support, not suspicion. When a child refuses school, they need understanding and appropriate intervention, not punishment.

Children are individuals who have many different ways of responding the environment. We need conversation and listening rather than blame and coercion from policymakers, educators, and society as a whole.

The number of families joining the estimated 111,700 children being home-educated in England continues to grow – not because parents are abandoning education, but because they’re prioritising their children’s wellbeing over institutional compliance. We must provide educational choice to parents and children.

One way is to extend government funding for approaches like Montessori education that have proven track records of supporting children’s wellbeing alongside academic achievement. The system as it stands should not be the only one to be funded by government. Parents should be given the opportunity to make the right choice for their child, irrespective of their financial status. Another way is to fundamentally rethink what we mean by educational success.

The children hiding in cars, falling silent in distress, or refusing to leave their homes aren’t the problem – they’re the messengers. Their pain is telling us that our system needs radical reform. The question isn’t how to force more children through the school gates, but how to create educational environments that call our young people to “run” into school because they are “madly in love” with what it offers.

Our children’s futures and their mental wellbeing depend on courage to embrace alternative approaches that offer compassion, respect, and genuine understanding of how children learn and thrive.