When School Feels Like a Threat: EBSA, Compliance and the Cost to Our Children

There is a story being told in staffrooms, local authorities and policy briefings about Emotionally‑Based School Avoidance (EBSA).

Students are more anxious. Parents are overprotective. COVID knocked routines. Attendance expectations need tightening. Schools just need to be more consistent.

It’s a comforting story. A story where the system remains fundamentally sound, and the problem exists somewhere outside it - in families, in children, in culture.

But from where I’m standing - as a parent, as someone who has spent years inside SEND systems, tribunals, and exclusion processes - that story is wrong.

Not incomplete. Not simplistic.

Wrong.

Because EBSA is not increasing despite the way English schools now operate. It is happening because of it.

And until we’re honest about that, more children will disappear quietly from classrooms - not through rebellion, but through withdrawal.

EBSA isn’t refusal. It’s a nervous system response

Let’s start with something basic, because even here we often get it wrong. EBSA is not defiance. It is not laziness. It is not a parenting failure. It is what happens when a child’s nervous system decides that school is no longer a psychologically safe place to be.

That decision is not made intellectually. It’s not strategic. It’s not conscious.

It’s visceral.

Heart racing. Stomach pain. Shutdown. Tears. Rage. Exhaustion. Silence. Avoidance is not the goal - relief is.

And when school attendance reliably produces distress, avoidance becomes the only regulation strategy left.

The question we should be asking is not:

“Why won’t this child come to school?”

But:

“What is it about school that their nervous system has learned to fear?”

The system has changed - radically

When parents say, “School wasn’t like this when I was young,” they’re not being nostalgic. They’re being accurate. Over the last 15–20 years, English schooling has undergone a profound shift. Not just in curriculum, but in ethos.

We have moved from:

• relational authority → I know you

• professional trust → I’ll use my judgement

• local flexibility → we’ll adapt

To:

• procedural authority → follow the system

• visible compliance → prove it

• standardisation → no exceptions

This didn’t happen because teachers wanted it.

It happened because of:

• academisation

• Ofsted frameworks

• performance tables

• attendance metrics

• behaviour data

• litigation fear

Schools are no longer primarily communities. They are delivery mechanisms operating under constant audit. And delivery mechanisms prioritise what can be measured.

Which brings us to the holy trinity of modern schooling:

“Knowledge rich” curriculum. Behaviour systems. Attendance enforcement.

Each makes sense in isolation.

Together, they create an environment many children experience as relentlessly unsafe.

Knowledge rich, emotionally poor

Let me be clear before anyone stops reading.

Knowledge matters.

I am not arguing for low expectations, soft curriculums, or intellectual dilution. But the way “knowledge rich” has been operationalised in many schools is not neutral.

In practice, it often means:

• rapid pacing

• high cognitive load

• constant retrieval

• frequent public questioning

• little tolerance for partial understanding

For some children, this is stimulating. For others, it feels like standing under a spotlight waiting to be exposed.

The message isn’t:

“We’re here to build knowledge together.”

It’s:

“You must keep up - visibly - at all times.”

And crucially, mistakes are no longer private. They are performed. For anxious children, that changes everything. Because learning now carries social risk.

If I get it wrong, I don’t just fail - I’m seen to fail.

Avoidance becomes logical.

Teach Like a Champion: order at a psychological cost

Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion is everywhere now.

SLANT. Cold call. No opt‑out. Tight transitions. 100% compliance.

These techniques are often presented as neutral, even benevolent - tools to create calm, focused classrooms.

And in a narrow sense, they work. They produce visible order. But psychologically, they do something far more consequential.

They remove safety valves.

1. The loss of safe invisibility

Many children manage anxiety by observing before engaging. They need time. They need choice. They need control over exposure. SLANT and cold call remove that completely.

You are always potentially next. There is no hiding.

For anxious pupils, the classroom becomes a stage. And stages are terrifying.

2. Turning neurology into misconduct

Under these systems:

• looking away = disrespect

• fidgeting = defiance

• silence = disengagement

Neurodivergent bodies become behavioural problems. Children learn very quickly:

“The way my body exists is wrong here.”

That belief corrodes belonging.

And without belonging, attendance collapses.

3. No space for dysregulation

There is almost no room in these systems for:

• overload

• shutdown

• delayed processing

• emotional flooding

Distress is met with correction. Correction escalates threat. Threat produces avoidance. This is not complicated psychology. It’s basic human response.

Performance management: why good teachers feel trapped

Here’s the part that rarely gets said out loud. Many teachers know when a child is struggling. They can see the anxiety. They can feel the overload. But they are operating inside a system that punishes flexibility.

Teachers are:

• judged on visible compliance

• observed for consistency

• performance‑managed on behaviour

• pressured on attendance

Compassion becomes risk. Discretion becomes deviation. So even the most caring teachers are often forced into doing harm - not because they believe in it, but because the system demands it.

This is how moral injury happens in education.

And it’s why EBSA isn’t just a child issue.

It’s a workforce issue.

Attendance: when distress becomes deviance

Attendance has become the sharpest weapon in the system. Percentages. Thresholds. Letters. Meetings. Legal language. Nuance disappears.

Anxiety and illness look the same on a spreadsheet. For families already struggling, attendance pressure doesn’t motivate. It terrifies.

And for children, it does something devastating. It tells them:

“Your distress is a problem - not something to be understood.”

At that point, school isn’t just unsafe.

It’s hostile.

Uniform and micro‑compliance: erosion by a thousand cuts

Strict uniform policies are often dismissed as trivial. They are not.

For many children - especially autistic and sensory‑sensitive ones - uniform enforcement is a daily reminder that comfort, identity and autonomy don’t matter. Each correction is small - but cumulative.

What adults call standards, children experience as rejection.

And rejection is a powerful driver of withdrawal.

Why EBSA is rising now

Put all of this together.

A system that:

• maximises exposure

• moralises behaviour

• penalises difference

• escalates threat

• measures compliance

• suppresses discretion

Then act surprised when children start to disappear.

EBSA is not a mystery.

It is a predictable outcome of an education model that prioritises control over connection.

The lie schools tell themselves

Many schools respond to EBSA by tightening the screws.

More routine. More consistency. More pressure.

Because the system cannot admit that it might be the source of harm.

So the child must be.

This is how we lose children quietly.

Not through exclusion. But through attrition.

A message to teachers

If you’re a teacher reading this and feeling uncomfortable - good.

That discomfort isn’t accusation. It’s conscience. You didn’t create this system.

But you are operating within it. And at some point, every professional has to decide whether compliance is a virtue when it produces harm.

Pushing back doesn’t always mean rebellion. Sometimes it means:

• questioning absolutes

• naming harm honestly

• protecting a child quietly

• documenting what doesn’t work

• refusing to pathologise distress

Moral courage in education rarely looks dramatic.

It looks like refusal to lie.

A message to families

If your child can’t attend school right now, hear this:

You are not failing.

Your child is not broken.

They are responding normally to an environment that feels unsafe to them.

That truth matters.

Hold onto it.

The question we must face

The rise in EBSA is asking us something profound.

Not about attendance, but about what we believe school is for.

If education requires children to suppress their nervous systems to survive it, then the problem is not resilience.

It is design.

And design can be changed.

But only if we’re brave enough to admit that the system - not the child - needs to adapt.

SEND Dad Diaries exists because silence protects systems, not children. If this piece resonated, share it. Start the conversation. Make it harder to look away.