School Attendance and Systemic Barriers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/03/2024 (645 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Manitoba’s largest school division announced that 2,500 of its students were facing barriers in getting to school, it should cause all of us to take notice.

Unfortunately, the impulse for some has been to respond with individualized strategies. These strategies placed the spotlight on the student rather than on the system while enacting practices that are neither educationally sound nor research informed.

Not so long ago, the provincial government released “Safe and Caring Schools: A Policy Directive and Action Plan to Enhance Student Presence and Engagement.” It was accompanied by a costly ad campaign and an uninspiring slogan: “School. Keep Going.” Questions emerged about the people involved in drafting the action plan, including consultants, a private research group, and community members.

As a group of community members who are committed to promoting public education in Manitoba, we are appreciative of dialogue among all interested groups. However, we are concerned that the attendance task force leadership was glaringly missing educators and guardians.

Public schoolteachers and guardians, including parents, are vital resources in ensuring that supports are in place to break down systemic barriers facing students’ attendance at school. It’s telling that teachers and guardians were not selected to be sitting members of the task force.

Critical theorists, including Paulo Freire and bell hooks (the author prefers a lowercase spelling), suggest that for things to change, people who knowingly or unknowingly support unfair cultural and educational practices need to change. Having open conversations is key to noticing biases and creating more inclusive practices.

First, we must acknowledge that student absenteeism extends far beyond individual responsibility or family circumstances; it is a symptom of complex systemic issues within our education system. Students’ backgrounds in terms of power and privilege play a significant role in shaping their experiences within our system.

Power and privilege refer to the advantages that certain groups have in society based on race, wealth, gender, sexuality, ability, or other social identities. Historically and socially marginalized groups face significant barriers in terms of the type of experiences they have in our school system.

Our education system is still heavily industrialized and rooted in colonial practices and patriarchy. Students are tested for what they know; teachers are at the front of the class; white, cishet, able-bodied, neurotypical, leadership continue to apply compliance and coercion as mechanisms to control and manage the education system.

This setup hardly fosters a sense of belonging or supports students to thrive, but hey, “School. Keep Going.” What can we do about attendance? We suggest chronic absenteeism is an issue that can and should be addressed through a series of commitments within the infrastructure of a truly public education system. Schools must accept the role that they play in students choosing not to attend.

From colonial systemic practices to policy orientation and application, schools have a responsibility to do more than hire truancy officers. Actionable items moving forward include:

● Public schools need to perform a student services equity audit to remove barriers and become more accessible and welcoming for all who are enrolled.

● Public schools must be funded for accessibility and inclusion, providing nutritional programming and culturally relevant and engaging safe places before, during and after class times.

● All educators must value the presence of all students shying away from policies and practices that subtly or literally push them out. Placing students’ needs at the center, and focusing on caring relationship building can be a possible bridge to curriculum and learning.

● Schools must adopt policies built around student retention, finding alternatives to suspension to find sustainable solutions to attendance problems, in collaboration with community support networks that are publicly funded and managed (rather than private and/or religious groups, such as Inner City Youth Alive).

● We must do away with archaic attendance policies and create fluid conversations that are adaptive to student and family lives.

If you would like to be part of the conversation about student absenteeism and creating actionable items to improve student attendance, please send an email to publicedmb@gmail.com for information about our upcoming community event.

Colleen Dawson and Samir Hathout write for members of the People for Public Education.