VIDEO: The Kids Who Can't

‘THE KIDS WHO CAN’T’

29 April 2024

Four Corners

FRIEDA, CHILD, IN PHONE VIDEO: I can’t do it.

ALICE RICHARD, MOTHER, IN PHONE VIDEO: Why is that little sausage?

FRIEDA, CHILD: I don’t know.

TEXT: A growing number of Australian children are struggling to attend school.

ARCHIVE TV PRESENTER: These children are now being referred to as “school refusers” - a perhaps crude term for kids in emotional stress who can’t face being in the classroom.

WILL, CHILD: It’s honestly like a zoo – like that’s how crazy it is, and I just couldn't cope.

ETHAN, CHILD: I got bullied every day.  In my old school, made me feel like I’m locked up in a cage.

ARCHIVE NEWSREADER: It’s become such a big issue that a parliamentary inquiry’s underway to look at how to address the problem.

VERONICA ELLIOT, ACT COUNCIL OF PARENTS AND CITIZENS ASSOCIATIONS: Our children are not robots; they are people.

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT, IN PHONE VIDEO: Come on mate, we have to try mate, we try every day, that’s the deal.

TEXT: Many experts and families don’t like the term “school refusal”. They prefer to call it “School Can’t.”

SENATOR PENNY ALLMAN-PAYNE: We’ve really got the perfect storm - adolescent mental health issues on the rise, a teacher workforce crisis, and we’ve just come out of COVID lockdowns.

HALEY, 16: I had my parents coming, yelling at me, telling me that I'm lazy, I need to get out of bed.  All of my energy was just focused on staying alive.

GENEVIEVE ROWNEY, SCHOOL CAN’T FACEBOOK GROUP: What have we got here?  Mention of suicidal ideation. Trigger warnings - self-harm, suicide.

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: “Oh, they just need tough love.”  If that worked, my child would be at school.

TEXT: We spent time with families struggling with blame, shame and the fear of missing out on education.

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT:

I’m sure there will be people there saying to their TV, that woman just needs to grow a backbone and tell her kids what’s what. Before it happened to me, I was one of those parents.

 ALEX: It’s not like I just want to live my life as a disappointment, like, I love learning.

SHARYN SADLER, SUPPORT TEACHER: Every child is worth something.

DR LISA MCKAY-BROWN, RESEARCHER: We really need to address it before we lose a whole lot of kids from the education system.

TEXT: Every morning, more than 4 million children across Australia are expected to attend school.

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT, IN PHONE VIDEO:

Freddy, it’s time to go now. Come on mate, hop up please. It’s time to go. 

TEXT:  For an increasing number of them, it’s a struggle.

TEXT: 8.46am

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT, IN PHONE VIDEO: Frieda? Chicken?  Hey, come on darling, please hop up. Mate, it’s time to go to school. It’s a good day today to be at school. 

FRIEDA, CHILD, IN PHONE VIDEO: Mum, stop talking about school so much!

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: Ow! Ow! Please don’t kick me!

TEXT: School refusal or ‘School Can’t’ is not truancy. It occurs when a child has difficulty attending school because of emotional distress.

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT, IN PHONE VIDEO: So, let’s go.  Come on. Come on dude, let’s go. You’re like jelly today. Come on darling. Let’s go. Freddy. Come on darling. Mate. We’ve got to get going, honey. Come on. We’ve had lots of time this morning to get ready. Now it’s time to go. 

TEXT: 9.14am

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT, IN PHONE VIDEO: Try, alright?

FRIEDA, CHILD, IN PHONE VIDEO: Can you bring your bag in case? 

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: Can you carry this one then please? Freddy. Fred. Come on dude. Come on mate. We have to try mate. We try every day. That's the deal. Come on.

Let's go please. Freddy, come on.  Okay, we're out of the car. 

TEXT: It can be caused by problems at home or school, but it’s often associated with autism, ADHD and anxiety disorders.

TEXT: 10.00am

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT, IN PHONE VIDEO: Darling, what's going on? 

FRIEDA, CHILD, IN PHONE VIDEO: I can’t do it.

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: Why is that?

FRIEDA, CHILD: I don’t know.

TEXT: 10.01am

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT, IN PHONE VIDEO: Fred! No, no, no, no mate. It's time to go up to school.  Frieda. Dude. Fred, please don't take your shoes off. We're going up to the classroom. Honey, I need to go to work. Freddy.  Can I just talk to you for a sec?  I feel like this is probably not going to happen today, is it mate?

FRIEDA, CHILD: No.

ALICE RICHARD. PARENT: Alright, well let's go home, but I have to do some work for a while when I get home, okay, because it's really late. It's like 10 o'clock already.

FRIEDA, CHILD, AT HOME: There’s nothing I can do! Mum, I’m bored.

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: I wish I could play with you chicken, but I just have to get this done. There's other people waiting on my work. Hey, please don't pull on my chair, mate. I get frustrated when you pull on my chair. So I just have to do this. Okay, 

FRIEDA, CHILD: I want to sit on your lap. 

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: Yeah. Hey, hey, hey. I need my mouse. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back to work, chicken. 

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: Ideally, I would be sitting down with her and doing some educational stuff, but I don't have capacity to do that. So, she's basically left to her own devices, you know. I'm trying to keep my job here. I've thought a lot about having to do homeschooling with Fred, but I can't afford to.  It really, it started in kindergarten. Fred was having trouble going into school.  You know some days we couldn't even get out of the house. Some days we would get as far as the footpath and then she couldn't go in.  And then sometimes you would just run away, hey Fred? And one term she got down to, I think it was less than 20% attendance. It was very low. She was having a lot of trouble. Partly because Frieda masks her autism, she does appear like a model student in the classroom. But the days that she did end up staying at school, she’d get home and just fall apart. In the early days I would drag her to the classroom door and then her teacher would literally drag her inside and shut the door, so she was trapped in there. I'm talking like a five-year-old child being bodily pulled by a full grown adult and then separated from their parent with a door that's locked.  And that traumatised her so much. Like, I'm ashamed of that. And I didn't know better. I didn't know any better.  ‘Oh, they just need tough love’. If that worked, my child would be at school. You try the reward charts, you try making home boring so they don't want to be here. None of the stuff that the experts say you should do works.

FRIEDA, CHILD, IN BEDROOM: Look, this is my crab.

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT, IN BEDROOM:  Oh, now your crab like that.  I haven't seen you do the crab dance for a while actually. So funny! [laughs] Oh my god, kiddo. You make me laugh every single day.

 ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: You see other families, their kids just happily going to school and getting to know each other at school drop off and school pick up, and you feel like you're just in this complete other world. That's a really lonely and confusing and shameful world…because you assume that you are the problem because everyone tells you that you're the problem. And Fred, you know you said to me a few times, I just don't know why it's so hard for me. I wish it was easy for me like the other kids.  And that's what you've said all along – not that I don't want to go to school, I can't.

FRIEDA, CHILD:

It's boring when I don't go to school and that's why I get a bit upset when I usually don't make it to school. ‘Cause I really want to, but somehow I don't know how to get there.

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: Yeah.

ALICE RICHARD, PARENT: You know the Department of Education talks all about inclusive education, every child's entitled to an education, but you know, they don't seem to understand what autistic kids need, what ADHD kids need. We found that individual teachers are wonderful, and they try really hard, but schools, they seem to only really cater to this fairly narrow range of brains and kids, right? And that's a real shame.  I would much rather her be well than be at school all the time.  That’s, you know, if her having perfect attendance, if the cost of that is her mental health, it's not worth it. It just isn’t worth it.

TEXT: There are more than 100,000 autistic young people enrolled in Australian schools. While many get extra support, nearly half, “indicated they need more... assistance at school than they are receiving.” [Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics]

ASSOC. PROF. GLENN MELVIN AT CONFERENCE: This might sound a little controversial, might think I've got it round the wrong way, but why would kids bother coming to your school? In a time when attendance has really shot down.

TEXT: Very little research has been done into school refusal in Australia.

ASSOC. PROF. LISA MCKAY-BROWN AT CONFERENCE:  When a school attendance type problem is emerging, we don’t necessarily know what type it is. Maybe it's school refusal, maybe it's school withdrawal.

TEXT: Dr Glenn Melvin and Dr Lisa McKay-Brown are experts in this emerging field.

ASSOC. PROF. LISA MCKAY-BROWN: What we were finding is that more and more young people weren't attending school, and we were trying to work out why. And it's not just an Australian problem, this is something that is happening internationally and it’s been researched internationally.

TEXT: The student attendance rate has been declining for 10 years. Just under half of all Years 7 - 10 students are now absent for more than 20 days a year.

ASSOC. PROF. GLENN MELVIN: We really don’t know how many children, teens in Australia are refusing or can’t get to school at the moment. There's been a lot of concern in the community that rates have really skyrocketed since the pandemic. 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.

TEXT: Victoria is the only state that tracks school refusal numbers. In 2021 it impacted 11,825 students in public schools – but the Victorian government says this is a conservative estimate.

TEXT: In a recent poll of 1,003 parents commissioned by the Greens, 39% said their child had experienced school refusal in the past year. 

ASSOC. PROF. GLENN MELVIN: I sometimes think of it like school refusal is a child waving a big flag. They're saying I'm not managing, I'm not coping. And for some, methods of showing their distress and expressing their distress can be quite extreme. I've worked with parents who've had knives pulled on them by their kids are so desperate, so anxious in the morning to avoid going to school.  This isn't isolated kids here and there, it's in every school around Australia.  From private schools, Catholic schools, public schools, it’s across the spectrum.

TEXT: A small team of volunteer mums run School Can’t Australia, a Facebook group for struggling parents like them. They have over 11,500 members, and a long waiting list.

PARENT IN MEETING: Yeah, so there's 2,199 member requests waiting ...

PARENT: What's the longest person who's been waiting? 

PARENT: 15 weeks.

PARENT: 16 weeks!

PARENT: 16 weeks even.

PARENT IN MEETING: I feel a lot of pressure to let them in because there's some quite desperate parents in there that really need the support.

PARENT:  So, we had lots of distressed posts coming through and lots of distressed parents.

GENEVIEVE ROWNEY, PARENT, ONLINE IN MEETING:  So much of what actually is actually underlying that parent frustration is essentially a lot of fear.  I know certainly in New South Wales, for us it was a feeling of almost desperation to get your child to go because you knew that it was actually a legal matter.  “Oh my god, it's the law, you have to go. I'm going to get in big trouble.”

TEXT: Sydney

TEXT: Genevieve Rowney, a former psychologist, joined the group in 2017.

GENEVIEVE ROWNEY, PARENT, AT HOME LOOKING AT FACEBOOK: What have we got here? Trigger warning, self-harm, suicide, Heartbroken. Oh, something to do with legal threats as well. It's just nonstop, seven days a week. The posts come through where people are just feeling a real sense of urgency about ‘I've got to be at work and my child won't get out of bed. He's saying he's feeling like ending his life. Oh my god, what do I do?’ It seems absurd that essentially the greatest support that the community has out there for this kind of issue is through a Facebook page. I don’t know how much longer we can sustain it because we all are carrying a huge personal load ourselves, and we’re working around the clock.  And I know, certainly with my own experience that it's not just the children that end up isolated, it's actually the parents as well. Because quite often you have to quit working to look after your child.  So, all of a sudden your world gets very, very small. But to be able to step into this arena where it's like, oh my goodness, there's thousands and thousands of other people that are going through this, it's amazing. 

GENEVIEVE ROWNEY TO KIDS: You alright, Johnny?  You OK?

PHIL (HOME TUTOR): Can you read it for me as well?

JAKE, CHILD: Um... the background to the Gaza-Israel conflict.

PHIL (HOME TUTOR): What are the religions involved? 

WILL, CHILD: I'm pretty sure Jewish, Muslim and what was the third one? 

TUTOR: They're the two main ones. 

WILL, CHILD: Yeah.

PHIL (HOME TUTOR): That's the Gaza Strip there.  And you’re going to start writing, with your subheadings...

TEXT: Jake, 11 and Will, 15 have been homeschooled for 7 years.

GENEVIEVE ROWNEY, PARENT: William's reaction to having to go to school every day. It was so extreme. Lots and lots of crying, begging. His body would just shake like a terrified puppy. He would try and jump out of the car.  He was putting himself in some very, very dangerous positions. Jake on the other hand, he was more silent.  Hiding the uniform, hiding the schoolbag. I remember at one point finding him trying to set his uniform actually on fire. I just could not believe that this was happening. Because I had wonderful memories from primary school, the sort of kid who, I ended up being sort of school captain and going to high school and I mean I went to uni for nearly 10 years.

You have all sorts of wild visions like, “Oh my God, I'm going to end up with these adult sons living in my basement.  They're going to be gamers and on the dole for the rest of their life, what's going to become of them?”

GENEVIEVE ROWNEY, PARENT, TO KIDS: Would you like a peanut butter sandwich or a cheesy mac or something?

GENEVIEVE ROWNEY, PARENT: William, he's autistic and has ADHD and huge anxiety. He's also tested as intellectually gifted. So, he was a very bright child.

WILL, CHILD: From kindergarten it was already just like 30 kids all in one classroom, one teacher screaming, the smells. In the bathrooms, it just is crazy. People are just vandalising it, throwing toilet paper everywhere. It's honestly like a zoo. That's how crazy it is. And I just couldn't cope. And I was just like, man, I honestly can't do this for 13 more years every day. I don't know how to explain, but I'd put on like this fake personality where it looked like I was enjoying it and it looked like I was fine, but deep down inside like it was just physically draining and just mentally like I just hated it. 

PHIL (HOME TUTOR): Square, hexagon, quadrilateral, pentagon.  Do you remember what the tool was we used to measure angles?

 WILL, CHILD: I guess it is somewhat a little bit lonely. I do respect school and like the whole social thing, but if there was a school that suited to my needs, and I reckon I definitely could go back, but just like the way the school system is in like Australia, it's just I can't. 

GENEVIEVE ROWNEY, PARENT: You know we had tried everything at this stage.  We had a psychiatrist on board, psychologist, OT, every professional under the sun. The teachers at his school were so lovely. Like, everybody was trying their best.  But still my sons’ attendance, it dropped to a certain point where it seemed like it must be out of the hands of the school. So, then the Department actually then handed us a letter threatening legal action.

TEXT: These are similar letters sent by the NSW Department of Education. The NSW Department of Education told Four Corners: “Where attendance improvement support has been unsuccessful…. and the parents have not meaningfully engaged, the matter may be referred for consideration of legal action.”

GENEVIEVE ROWNEY, PARENT: So, in the end our hand was forced, and we had to withdraw and start homeschooling.  And this is something that we hear in the School Can’t group all of the time – families feeling like they are kind of forced into homeschooling. When I think about it, it really pisses me off thinking, “Why should my children be excluded?”

TEXT: The number of homeschooled children has doubled over the past 5 years.

TEXT: Perth

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: Fred, breakfast. I'm giving you five minutes warning that we're going to go to the park in five minutes. Do you understand me?

FRED, CHILD: Help, help, help, help.

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT:  Help, help, help. He says, while eating a waffle. Alright get ready and then we're going.

 SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: I’m going to laminate these and we'll take them with us and see if we have any luck.  So, it's just a scavenger hunt list and it'll be with their different senses.  That covers health, that covers ethics. That'll cover STEM. We'll be able to bring in literacy and numeracy. So yeah, that's the plan for today. We'll see how we go. It’s very, very child-led. For Henry, it's dinosaurs. He's really interested in them. So I try and source dinosaur-themed activities, whereas for Fred, he's really into insects at the moment. 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PAENT, TO CHILDREN: Fred, we're putting our sneakers on in one sec. Please finish your level. 

FRED YELLING

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: Oh no... Oh no, Fred, I can't remember. 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: So, I have Henry who is 10 and I have Freddie who is six.

TRYING TO PUT SHOES ON FRED

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY HEADING OUT WITH BOYS: Right, let’s go see what Henry needs. Let’s go.  Off to the park.                                   

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: Both of my kids are autistic and ADHD. 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY CARRYING FRED AND GETTING ANNOYED BY HENRY

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: Stop. Stop. Because he's on my back. Stop. Let go. Let go. Walk ahead. Walk ahead. 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: They are homeschooled children. 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY IN PARK: Hey guys, I think there's daycare kids on the flying fox. Hang on.

 SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: And it is not something that any of us want to be doing.

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY TEACHING IN THE PARK: So guys, listen to a bird chirp. Okay, so we've got to be silent when we listen for a bird chirp. So we can tick that off. Tell me who - you heard one? Okay. You can tick that section when we're off the swings. Oh, I heard it too, H. Your hearing's better than mine. 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: I was so reluctant and I still am. I don't like doing it. It's exhausting. I want to be at work. I want to be contributing to society. I want to be earning an income for my family. I want to be setting an example for my kids.

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY TEACHING: It says tactile. Do you know what tactile means? 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: And yet I don't have any other choice. There's nowhere for my children to go that I can drop them off in the morning and be confident that they will be okay when I pick them up. 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY TEACHING: What is another opposite? Let's try and think of one. 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: Look. I'd rather have a kid who is out of the school system and a kid that I'm having to homeschool than a kid who is no longer alive. And that was the point we're at. 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY PICKING UP FEATHER: What's it off? Can you tell what kind of bird? 

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY MAKING LUNCH: That’s about all of the formal education that I'm able to get done with my kids on a day when it's not a great day. And there are many, many, many days like today where what we get done is just the bare minimum. And that's part of my worry. It is nowhere near enough work that they're getting done. There is nowhere near enough learning going on. 

SON: I’m thirsty!

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: And I really worry that as they get older, the longer we homeschool, they're going to fall more and more behind.  And then that's going to make it harder for them to re-transition back into the school system, which has always been the goal. This has never been the, “We're going to homeschool their whole school lives”. It's always been an emergency ‘for now’ measure.  It just doesn’t seem to have an end.

SYMONE LOOKING THROUGH OLD PHOTOS OF BOYS

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: That’s Fred in his uniform at school. And obviously we can see when Fred finds it hard at school that’s the sort of thing we get. Poor Fred, like you can’t suspend 5-year-old kids – it’s ridiculous. What on earth is that going to achieve? This was Henry the last year that he attended school, that’s sad. Probably the last school photo he’ll ever be in.  Henry has not been at school since June of 2021.

 SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY TO HENRY: Do you remember this?

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: I dropped him off at school that day and he just broke. He was clinging to me, he didn’t want to go in. And his behaviour escalated to the point that it was unsafe. He was in complete and utter crisis.  There was no-one on the student services team who was there that day, no social worker, no youth worker, no case manager for Henry, no school psychologist, no school counsellor, there was no-one. And he was removed by ambulance. And it was absolutely heartbreaking.

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY WITH PAPERWORK:  So, when you put in your registration paperwork for home education, you get sent out this auto-reply email explaining... “Moderators are appointed to: evaluate the educational program, evaluate whether the student is making satisfactory progress. Ah, and here we go, ‘concerns’ - this is the bit that really bothers me: ‘section 53(1)(a) of the Act provides for a cancellation of home education registration if the child’s educational progress is not satisfactory’.

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY KNOCKS ON BEDROOM DOOR: Hey, we’re going to do something for homeschool, so have a think if you would like to read a book together or if you would like to do a science experiment. Agree?

FRED: Nooooo!

SYMONE: Mate.

FRED: Ahhhhhhhhh!

SYMONE: Would you like me to stay with you or go away? So that went well!

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY ON VIDEO CHAT WITH EDUCATION CONSULTANT: It’s been a difficult week because I put my formal paperwork in, like it wasn’t that long ago, and all of a sudden like this massive load of anxiety comes on.

JONELLE FRASER (NDIS-FUNDED EDUCATION CONSULTANT):  Stop. Ok? Don’t say the word homeschooling out loud this week. You have those moments where you think ‘I haven’t done anything, I’m not teaching them, they’re not learning’ and now you’ve received a letter that says if you don’t do it right, you’re not coming back here.

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY:  And it also says ‘you thought you got away, look, fist is still here, we can still control you’

JONELLE FRASER:  At the end of the day, you have plenty of evidence that shows you’re doing the right thing for your kids. Go and have a rest, be with your beautiful kids, and I’ll see you soon.

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY:  Bye!

SYMONE WHEATLEY-HEY, PARENT: I’m so scared – what if I fuck this up?

SENATOR PENNY ALLMAN-PAYNE: I think it's fair to say that the education system is in crisis. We've seen a consistent decline of student results. We're also seeing attendance rates go down. And we're seeing teachers leave the profession in droves. And for many of them, it's because you feel like you can't help the students in front of you.

TEXT: Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne helped instigate a Senate Inquiry into school refusal last year.

ARCHIVE PENNY ALLMAN-PAYNE IN SENATE: This is certainly an issue that’s close to my heart as a teacher of nearly 30 years.

SENATOR MATT O’SULLIVAN: There will be some in society who will just say, 'The kids just need a kick in the pants to get to school,' you know.  

CAROLYN GRANTSKALNS (INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS AUSTRALIA): All the kicking in the pants isn't going to make any difference because the behaviour is out of the child’s conscious control.

SENATOR PENNY ALLMAN-PAYNE: There were times during the inquiry that I found listening to the testimony really difficult.

PENNY ALLMAN-PAYNE IN SENATE: Would you like us to take a minute?

SENATOR PENNY ALLMAN-PAYNE: To know there are times when you’ve actually failed students because you haven’t had a fuller understanding of the issue.

JENNIFER RICKARD (AUSTRALIAN PARENTS’ COUNCIL): I think it's really difficult for a school education system to understand that it causes trauma. Right or wrong, and no-one intentionally meant for that to happen, but it has occurred.

PENNY ALLMAN-PAYNE IN SENATE: I mean we heard today that 1 in 4 students has some sort of mental health challenge.  You know increasingly our classrooms are becoming more and more complex.

VERONICA ELLIOTT (ACT COUNCIL OF PARENTS AND CITIZENS ASSOCIATIONS): Meeting the needs of individual students doesn't always have to be a complicated and expensive exercise.

PROF. JENNIE HUDSON (BLACK DOG INSTITUTE): What’s clear that there is no consistency in how wellbeing and mental health is addressed in schools and within curriculums.

SENATOR PENNY ALLMAN-PAYNE: We pretty much have a one-size-fits-all education system, at the moment. You know, this is the model of education that we had over 100 years ago.  The world is very different now. Young people are very different now. And so as long as we continue to do education the way we are -  you know, large numbers of students just sitting at desks in classrooms, I think we’re only going to see this problem increase.

TEXT: The Senate Inquiry made 14 recommendations to the federal, state and territory governments. They include: A nationally agreed definition of school refusal and a consistent approach to recording school absences; funding a support network for parents and schools; an expansion of subsidised student mental health care visits.

SENATOR PENNY ALLMAN-PAYNE: The good news is that we know that there are things that work. Early intervention. Smaller class sizes, flexible campuses, interest-led learning. All of these things work to help a young person integrate back into their education.

TEXT: Geelong, Victoria

TEXT: Some specialist schools are doing things differently.

PERRI BROADBENT-HOGAN (CO-PRINCIPAL) TO KIDS: Morning Jack, how are you feeling? It's great to see you! Thanks for coming to school!  Morning Harley. Great to see you mate. Alright, let you in.  Oh, you've got a new backpack!  Wow!  Have a good day mate. Is Maddie there to open the gate for you?

TEXT: MacKillop Education operates a non-government school that helps students disengaged from mainstream schooling.

PERRI BROADBENT-HOGAN (CO-PRINCIPAL) TO KIDS: Good to see you. Morning, Ben. Morning Daniel. Welcome to school. Thanks for coming in. Morning. Hey Jack. Lovely to see you, mate. Thanks for coming to school.  Oh, here comes Ethan. Oh, Ethan. Here comes Ethan. Morning Ethan.

ETHAN, CHILD: Good morning.

PERRI BROADBENT-HOGAN: So good to see you, mate.

ETHAN: Yeah.

PERRI: Looking forward to school?

ETHAN: Yes.

PERRI BROADBENT-HOGAN (CO-PRINCIPAL): I’ve worked in alternative education for about 12 years. I mean, I'm just deeply, deeply passionate about ensuring that every single child has access to an education.

PERRI BROADBEN-HOGAN TO KIDS: All right, we'll go this way.

PERRI BROADBENT-HOGAN (CO-PRINCIPAL): We have 80 students enrolled. We only have eight students per class. So, we're in incredibly lucky in terms of how we're resourced.

 TEACHER: Let's… alright, is this everyone? 

PERRI BROADBENT-HOGAN, CO-PRINCIPAL: And we do have a waitlist at the moment, it is very large, up to about 100 on the waitlist. Because what we do, I think first and foremost is create an environment of physical and emotional safety, which really enables them to create the building blocks that they need to succeed academically. And no child can learn if they don't feel safe.

DANIELA BORYS, TEACHER: Sharyn, you can him write the headings on.  So what sound, are we listening for? A: rain. Who would like to come and do that? Ethan, can you come and point to the sound?

ETHAN, CHILD: A 

DANIELA BORYS, TEACHER: That's right. One sound. Good job.  Everyone say the sounds as you write them.  Find some of the different ways to spell the sound: AY.  What sound are we listening for? AY. Rain. M-ay, May work. W-ait, wait, now you are quick, this morning. Good boy. 

DANIELA BORYS, TEACHER: When Ethan first started, he was quite low in all areas of the curriculum. He couldn't read, you quite low in maths as well.

SHARYN SADLER, SUPPORT TEACHER: He was afraid of work. There was a fear of failure. And that's actually common amongst many of our children because they've experienced so much failure. He would literally beat himself up. He would bite or pull his hair and he would say, ‘I'm so dumb’. That's the thing that upset him most was that he thought he was stupid.

DANIELA BORYS, TEACHER IN CLASS: Eth, can you collect these for me please darling? Alright, excellent. Let's go.

DANIELA BORYS, TEACHER: Our goal is to be able to transition back into a mainstream school, and we’ll help him down that path.

ETHAN CHILD: Can I have a go? I just patted a chicken!

SAM HERNITS, PARENT: Ethan's attendance, attending mainstream school wasn't great. The struggle started from grade prep. I actually went in one day and observed what was happening in the classroom and I was just shocked with how he was treated from the others. He was kind of pushed to the side. So instead of sitting there and writing a sentence like the other children were doing, they just said, oh, just draw a picture. It pushed him further and further away from being able to learn.

 TEACHER IN CLASS: Good job, Seb. Can you can do a bit more?

 SAM HERNITS, PARENT: He was becoming more and more disengaged. So he would go around, he would kick windows, he would break things, he would throw things. There were times where he even threatened to harm himself because he didn't want to be there. He didn't want to be around that environment anymore.

ETHAN, CHILD: I refused to go to my old school because it wasn't safe for me. I got bullied every day. Made me feel in my old school like I was locked up in a cage.

SAM HERNITS, PARENT: I used to say to you that everyone has to go to school. When you used to fight back a lot and you used to say, I don't want to go. I don't want to go. And then after Covid it became harder, didn't it?

ETHAN, CHILD: Yeah.

SAM HERNITS, PARENT: So then it got to a point where he was kind of, I suppose, put in the too-hard basket in a sense. And they said, well, we don't know what else to do.   I was really scared for his future, and I didn't know. You always imagine what your child can be when they get older, and I was kind of at a point where I don't know where he's going to be.

ETHAN WHISPERING TO HIS MUM

SAM HERNITS, PARENT: How did you feel about going down the wrong path?

ETHAN, CHILD: I felt like I wouldn't actually get a job when I get older. I would be homeless, sleeping on the side of the road, that's all.

SAM HERNITS, PARENT: What about now, how do you feel?

ETHAN, CHILD: I feel like I got hope. I got hope, more hope in myself.

PERRI BROADBENT-HOGAN, CO-PRINCIPAL: The mainstream schooling system just isn't designed to meet the needs of diverse children and young people.  And then how a student interprets that is ‘they don't want me here’. And so it sort of starts this cycle, I guess, of disengagement. The risk of other pathways increases significantly, their risk of ending up in youth justice with significant mental health challenges. And there's research to show that the cost of that is far greater than the cost of just investing in a child's education. Even if it does cost more than the average student.

BANGING ON OFFICE WINDOW

PERRI BROADBENT-HOGAN, CO-PRINCIPAL: I might need to go deal with that, Sascha. If he goes, he'll really go so I might move you. Have we locked the front door? Okay, cool. Maybe just come out here. Because we might break a window.  I would love to just go out there and give him a really big hug because sometimes what they’re telling us they need in those moments is just a little bit of extra care. No matter what students do, we know that’s not a representation of who they are.

ETHAN, CHILD: Hi.

TEACHER’S AIDE: Hi, how are you?

ETHAN, CHILD: Good, thanks.

TEACHER’S AIDE: Billy's very excited to see you. Is she nice and soft?

ETHAN, CHILD: Yeah.

TEACHER’S AIDE: So dogs can't tell us with their words how they're feeling. They can tell us more with their body.

SAM HERNITS ,PARENT: ‘No Child Left Behind’ is definitely not a reality, I wouldn't say, because Ethan was left behind. Ethan, when he came here, he couldn't read, couldn't write, couldn't do anything, and now.

ETHAN, CHILD: Couldn't even spell my name!

SAM HERNITS, PARENT: Couldn't even spell your name. But now he's taking on board the learning that he has to the point where he can go back to mainstream school next year.

ETHAN, CHILD: I’m proud of myself.

SHARYN SADLER (SUPPORT TEACHER): Every child is worth something. And they will bring that to society when they get older. I mean, goodness knows what would’ve happened if Ethan had not come here.

TEXT: The public education system is also looking for ways to keep children in school. In 2022, the NSW Education Department set up a pilot program for high school students with chronic attendance problems.

TEACHER: Morning? How you going?

ALEX: So good, loving life.

TEXT: 21 students attend the Acacia Program in southern Sydney. Demand is high.

HAYLEY, STUDENT: Hi, Christopher.

ALEX, STUDENT: Morning, honey buns.

CHRISTOPHER, TEACHER: Hayley, would you like to bring your daily planner and a pen?   Alright. Welcome. And we are halfway through week four.

HAYLEY, STUDENT: We’re up to week 4?

ALEX, STUDENT: I knew that.

CHRISTOPHER, TEACHER: It’s gone super quick. All right. I wanted to touch base with both of you around what this term’s project's going to be.

HAYLEY, STUDENT: I’ve been going here, so almost a full year.  I was very excited about starting here because I didn't want to have to drop out of school.  I had like a massive plan for my future. But then it was like all ripped away from me because I got unwell. Here, I got, like, a second chance, I guess.

HAYLEY IN CLASS: We get to, like, personalize our space. We get, like, a desk in, like, the wall. Here, I have a picture of a cow on a skateboard.

HAYLEY, STUDENT: It's very relaxed here. You can like just show up in pyjamas, which I have done a few times. But we don’t just come here and get to do whatever we want.  We actually have to do work.

CHRISTOPHER, TEACHER: All righty. So in relation to empirical reasoning, you're looking at research in color theory experiments. Do you have any sort of hypothesis about what you think might be the outcome of that research?

HAYLEY, STUDENT: We do project-based learning. So it's all based around my interests. And we have to show that we've hit every part of the curriculum in that project. And I do love learning and it's helped me get back into that.

HAYLEY IN CLASS: I'm just going to paint this term. Yeah. I really like realism.

CHRISTPHER, TEACHER: Yeah. Are there any different mediums you're thinking about exploring or just painting this term?

HAYLEY: Clay?

CHRISTOPHER, TEACHER: Clay? Yeah, definitely.

HAYLEY, STUDENT: At the start, I would come for like a few hours a day and not every day a week. And now I show up pretty much every single day. Well in primary school. I was in the top classes for everything, but I started getting depressed. Like year 5, I started not going to school, and then I dropped down.

ALEX, STUDENT ON BENCH WITH HAYLEY: You’re so weird.  Oh, my God you’re so weird.

HAYLEY, STUDENT: It kind of got worse. I'd start having, like, a few weeks at a time off school. Then last year, year nine, my attendance was terrible. It was at 7%. Yeah, I would just miss pretty much every single day. And I really wanted to get there, but I couldn't get out of bed. Most days I'd lie in my room. I'll like just in my bed, in the dark doing nothing.

And then I had my parents coming in, like yelling at me, telling me that I'm lazy. I'm not doing enough, I need to get out of bed. I got the light turned on like the blinds opened, the bed sheets pulled off, stuff like that.

KURT SPENCE,HALEY’S DAD, SHOWING MESSAGES ON PHONE: Just going back to the start, oops. “Unjustified absence. Your daughter has been marked absent from school.”

 “This episode is being recorded as unexplained or unjustified.” “Please explain this absence.” But you see, like 21st of November, 22nd of November, 23rd of November.  So, you're just getting it everyday. And I was thinking she was just being lazy at first.

KURT SPENCE:  And there are definitely times I said to her, “You just need to go to school because I need to go to work.” I was a single dad, two kids, you know, and you're only human and sometimes you, you know, you lose your temper, or you yell or, you know, or actually, which is worse a couple of times she seen me cry and I think that's even worse. Because then the guilt that she gets is a lot worse.

HAYLEY, STUDENT: My school didn't react very well to it. And they started like threatening fining us and stuff like that. And if you don't pay these fines, then you're going to have to go to court.

KURT SPENCE, PARENT: Yeah, I think they told us it was like a ten or $11,000 fine.  They put a lot of pressure on us because we were then trying to push her, “You just have to turn up.  Like, you have to show you're trying.”

HAYLEY, CHILD: I just wanted to focus on getting better and getting better enough to want to live. But I couldn't because school was such a big pressure.

 KURT SPENCE, PARENT: And she sort of said, “I just can't do it. I can't get out of bed.” And she started telling me why with a lot of tears, big fight. And then all of a sudden I'm like, “Oh my God, this is depression”. You know, I'm a mental health nurse by trade and I've done mental health nursing for years. Well, I couldn't believe I hadn't picked up on it. So that's why we got psychologists and eventually a psychiatrist and all that sort of thing. But it took a long time. To the school’s credit we started talking to the deputy principal and she was excellent, so she put a plan in place with Hayley, and she said, “Oh you’re doing everything you need to do, there’s no way you get fined.” I found out she was cutting herself.  So I saw some scratches to start with on her arms. But then she started really prolifically cutting. That crushing weight of having to be at school really made it hard, you know. Having a child doing that to themselves is really hard, and working in the industry, knowing what the outcomes can be. You know, we don't report youth suicide rates for a good reason, but they're huge. I think most people think that can never happen, I know it does.  So that was very hard.

KURT SPENCE, PARENT, IN CAR:

Ah yeah well she’ll be coming out in 2 minutes. It's nice being able to come and pick her up from school yeah, and have her attending.

KURT SPENCE, PARENT: And I can see a future for her well and truly because of this school.

KURT SPENCE IN CAR: Oh, did you get your results back for your test?

HALEY, STUDENT: Minimum standards?

KURT: Yeah, the minimum standards.

HALEY, STUDENT: Yeah. I got four in both of them, which is the highest you got.

KURT SPENCE IN CAR: Oh, excellent.

KURT SPENCE, PARENT: You could say yes there's a lot more money spent on these kids, I suppose, for this special school. It's a hell of a lot more money if she goes to hospital.

HALEY PLUCKS GUITAR: E, A, D, G, C

KURT SPENCE, PARENT: If schools like this can help get kids well and they're productive members of society, that's really good.  And I know Hayley hates the term school refusal. And I agree with her. I know that she was never refusing to go to school. She just couldn’t do it.

HALEY, STUDENT: My attendance is at 85% now. Yeah, I feel very optimistic about my future. I know I'm going to be a psychologist. I know I'm going to get a little college house and have two cats and a dog and a bird and hopefully a goat.

TEXT: Frieda’s attendance is slowly improving, and she successfully sat Year 3 NAPLAN.

TEXT: Ethan has smoothly transitioned back to a mainstream school.

TEXT: Henry and Fred aim to return to school next year with assistance from disability specialists.

TEXT: The federal government has said it will “consider... research into school refusal”.