By Chris Roberts, Senior Adviser for Safeguarding and Inclusion, Camden Learning
Behind every pattern of absence from school is a story and they’re rarely straightforward, and always personal. For a small number of pupils, that story involves real emotional barriers to coming into school.
Every so often in education, something nudges us to look again at a familiar issue, not because we’ve been getting it wrong, but because the world around our children is changing, and so are their needs.
Emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA) is one of those areas. Most of us recognise the pattern: a child who feels too anxious, too overwhelmed or simply “out of sync” with school life to attend regularly. However, over the past year, as we’ve worked closely with colleagues across Camden, it’s become clear that if we want to support children better, we may need to shift how we think about EBSA altogether.
This is where our new Sharing Perspectives Tool (SPT) comes in, set to launch this spring following pilots in a number of schools.
Emotionally based school avoidance, or EBSA, reflects the ‘can’t,’ not the ‘won’t’ of school attendance. It refers to situations where pupils report high anxiety and emotional difficulties when asked to attend school.
Why this matters
Across Camden Learning, a wide range of work is underway to reduce persistent absence and EBSA is one strand. Nationally, the pattern is striking: overall absence dipped slightly in Autumn 2024-25, yet persistent absence remains at around 20%, and the number of pupils missing more than half of school days has risen from 142,000 to 148,000. These children often sit at the most vulnerable end of the attendance spectrum.
It’s crucial to remember that EBSA is not an act of defiance, it’s a sign of distress. While diagnoses can help in some cases, we need to be careful not to medicalise what may be social, relational or environmental challenges. Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan, in The Age of Diagnosis, warns that when we label every struggle as an illness, we risk overlooking the real, day-to-day factors that could be addressed more quickly, directly and compassionately.
Language in this area is also evolving nationally, with terms like “Barriers to Education” or “Supporting Education Attendance and Engagement” beginning to replace EBSA. These shifts reflect a growing recognition that avoidance is rarely about one thing and it’s prompted us to think carefully about the kind of support we want to put in place across the partnership.
A tool created by practitioners, for practitioners
The SPT has been shaped by those working directly with children and schools. It isn’t a diagnostic tool or a replacement for existing systems; instead, it offers a simple, structured way to understand the same situation from the child, the parent or carer, and the school.
Each completes a short form made up mostly of yes/no or multiple-choice questions about routines, friendships, learning, confidence and future aspirations. The closed questions keep demands low and make honest responses easier.
When the three sets of answers are brought together, they often highlight differences in understanding that no one had spotted. In one pilot, a parent and child believed the child was struggling academically, when in fact they were making strong progress. In another, the school and parent shared the same concerns about friendships, giving them immediate common ground.
The purpose of the SPT is to bring perspectives together clearly so everyone can move forward from the same shared understanding.
The principle behind it: synchrony
One of the key ideas shaping the SPT is being in step with others. School life runs in sync: moving through corridors together, following timetables, learning alongside classmates, taking part in events and routines that build identity and belonging.
When a child misses school, they inevitably fall out of sync, with learning becoming harder to rejoin, friendships shift and confidence dips. The longer a child is absent, the bigger the emotional hurdle to return. From the school’s perspective, it becomes harder to know how the child and family are feeling or what support is needed.
Once everyone sees the same picture, it becomes far easier to identify useful next steps together.
Belonging, care and collective responsibility
Underlying all of this is a belief I hold very firmly: attendance is everyone’s business. We improve attendance by building a school culture where children feel they belong, where they know they are valued, and where it is obvious that if they are not in school, they are missed.
Every adult in a school has a part to play in this. Whether you teach, support, greet pupils at the gate or run lunchtime clubs, the message children pick up is “You matter, and we notice when you’re not here”. It builds the sense of care that gives children the confidence to return even when things feel difficult.
But care alone isn’t enough. We also have to be professionally curious about what sits beneath absence, because absence is nearly always a symptom, not a cause. If we focus only on the absence, we miss what’s really going on.
The SPT gives us a structured, respectful way to understand those root causes so we can respond to the real issue. The aim is for all our children to feel that school is a place not just where they must be, but where they want to be.
