My kid’s attendance officer was so intrusive when she visited – they’re wrong if they think it’ll get her back to school
A MUM has revealed she was left fuming when an “attendance officer” came to her home in a bid to get her daughter back to school.
Slaney explained that her 12-year-old hasn’t attended school since the Christmas holidays, and she has officially pulled her out to home school her – although she didn’t go into why, and just said she had “good reason” not to return.
In a video on her TikTok page, she said that the school has an app to record attendance on, and she had been informing them daily that her daughter wouldn’t be at school.
The school also phoned Slaney – who was also ensuring daughter Brooke was being educated while she was off – once a week to ask when she was going to be returning.
“And based on the reasons I explained why she wasn’t in school, I feel like they should have understood a bit more that it wouldn’t be so easy for her to come back,” she said.
Then, one day last month, Slaney received a call from the “education attendance officer”, who left a voicemail saying “if I didn’t call her back she was going to turn up at my house”.
The mum, who used to work in social services, admitted she knows why a child suddenly not going to school can be a “red flag”, so was “happy to comply”.
Once she eventually got back in touch with the attendance officer, they arranged for her to come the next day.
But she ended up being 45 minutes late, to which Slaney said: “Like I said I was happy to work with them and they wanted to see my child but it was a massive inconvenience because me and Brooke couldn’t really get on and do anything.”
When she eventually turned up, she “took one look” at Brooke and said “You look well, you look fine”.
“So we were going over what the real issues are, like why my daughter doesn’t want to go to school anymore,” she continued.
“And the teacher’s like ‘Well we need to (get you back to school) or we’re gonna fine your mum’.”
She then asked Brooke how she would like to come back to school, to which she replied that she’d try coming in once a week, then twice a week, and so forth.
“The education officer cuts her off straight away, and she’s like ‘No no no, can’t do that.
“You have to come in every day even if it’s just for one lesson but every single day’.”
Slaney knew immediately that the officer’s plan wouldn’t work because of the reasons she wasn’t going to school in the first place.
“I get they had to check on her wellbeing but I feel like these people sometimes have too much power or they think they have more power than they do,” she sighed.
“Her attitude really, really annoyed me.”
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After the education officer left, Slaney and her daughter worked on the plan, and Brooke agreed to go in one day a week.
“Two weeks go by, I’m still updating the school every day that she’s not gonna be in, they are still ringing me once or twice a week,” she explained.
“Then the education officer rung me again and was like, ‘I need to come back, I haven’t seen her in three weeks’.”
However, Slaney argued that the officer’s attendance was making Brooke “nervous”.
And when she said that she was probably going to end up homeschooling her, the officer said she would have to make a decision by the next day, or she would come to her house.
Slaney insisted she wouldn’t open the door if she did, adding: “It’s so disruptive, there’s a line between checking on her well-being and being intrusive.
“Now you’re going a bit on a power trip, that’s how I felt.”
Slaney concluded by saying she didn’t like how “forceful” the woman had been on the phone, and if she hadn’t had “an attitude”, she might have been “more willing to comply”.
“I don’t like threats, I don’t respond well to that,” she said, adding that she’s officially made the decision to homeschool Brooke, whichshe called “scary, overwhelming and exciting”.