{"id":16748,"date":"2026-03-16T11:16:53","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T11:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/?p=16748"},"modified":"2026-03-16T11:16:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T11:16:56","slug":"pda-society-consultation-events-gathering-feedback-on-absence-parent-blame-and-education-outside-of-school-settings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/pda-society-consultation-events-gathering-feedback-on-absence-parent-blame-and-education-outside-of-school-settings\/","title":{"rendered":"PDA Society consultation events: gathering feedback on\u00a0absence, parent blame, and education outside of school settings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\"><strong>Parent\u2013school agreements,\u00a0complaints\u00a0and power<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The White Paper talks about strengthening home\u2013school partnership agreements and resolving issues earlier, closer to school&nbsp;level rather than escalating to tribunal. On the surface, that sounds reasonable. Clear communication and shared expectations are good things&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The overall aim is to reduce adversarial disputes and stop families having to fight for support.&nbsp;However, the documents are less clear about what new independent safeguards would exist if complaints&nbsp;are&nbsp;handled more locally&nbsp;and&nbsp;many families have told us that \u201cpartnerships\u201d&nbsp;with schools&nbsp;can&nbsp;be&nbsp;very unequal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the PDA Society we&nbsp;understand&nbsp;that parents&nbsp;can&nbsp;already experience blame and judgement in their relationships with professionals, and we know this often gets worse&nbsp;if they complain or try to advocate for their child where&nbsp;there are differing opinions about what is right for&nbsp;them.&nbsp;It\u2019s&nbsp;really important&nbsp;that any changes to the law&nbsp;don\u2019t&nbsp;make this situation worse.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So&nbsp;we are inviting parents to join us to workshop what we should be&nbsp;putting in our consultation response.&nbsp;We\u2019ll&nbsp;be asking you to help us answer questions like:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>If complaints are to be handled differently, what would make that safe for families?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&nbsp;If agreements between home and school are strengthened, what needs to be in place to address power imbalance?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What would genuine partnership look like?&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This meeting will take place between 1:30 and 3pm on 12th March and you can book your place <a href=\"https:\/\/forms.office.com\/e\/aajKSxhLHr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\"><strong>Attendance,\u00a0absence\u00a0and education outside school<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The White Paper places a strong emphasis on attendance and engagement in school.&nbsp;We&nbsp;are worried that absence is being treated primarily as a problem to fix, rather than a signal of distress.&nbsp;We&nbsp;are unsure how education outside school will sit within the new&nbsp;framework.&nbsp;We&nbsp;are concerned about what happens if attendance becomes the focus, but flexibility is not protected.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are the parent of a child who is being educated outside of school, or has been for a period of their education,&nbsp;the parent of a child who struggles&nbsp;to attend school&nbsp;everyday, or if you an educator who specialised in either education outside of school or transitioning children back into education we\u2019d love to hear from you.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are hosting an open conversation about&nbsp;absence, what good&nbsp;absence&nbsp;policy&nbsp;looks like, and what support could and should be offered to children who&nbsp;can\u2019t&nbsp;attend school for periods of their education.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This session will take place on 19th&nbsp;March between 4pm and 6pm. You can book your place <a href=\"https:\/\/forms.office.com\/e\/95gSQqZYhh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">here<\/a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you for helping shape our responses to the government. We hope with your support we can help people making decisions understand the risks that most concern\u00a0families, and\u00a0take action that support\u00a0PDAers\u00a0to thrive educationally.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Parents:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/forms.office.com\/e\/aajKSxhLHr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Parent\u2013school agreements,&nbsp;complaints&nbsp;and power&nbsp; \u2013 Fill in form<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Educators: <a href=\"https:\/\/forms.office.com\/e\/95gSQqZYhh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Attendance,&nbsp;absence&nbsp;and education outside school&nbsp; \u2013 Fill in form<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This blog is to let you know about the next couple of opportunities to shape our consultation response.<br \/>\nHopefully you\u2019ve already seen the survey we\u2019ve put out, and the consultative conversation around SSP\u2019s. If not details on both and links to get involved are at the bottom of this blog.<br \/>\nNext we want to focus on two areas where parent carers \u2014 and those with experience of education outside traditional settings \u2014 have deep, practical insight: <\/p>\n<p>1. How families and schools work together, especially when things go wrong. <\/p>\n<p>2. How absence and education outside school are understood and protected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":15740,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[151,150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdasociety.org.uk\/pda2025staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}