Since the COVID-19 pandemic first sent public life into lockdown three years ago, school refusal has emerged as an increasing problem among Australian students.
Samara’s mother, “Michelle”, remembers it as a difficult time. A schoolteacher, Michelle had to juggle the demands of work and her children’s remote learning. “I was working at 11 o’clock at night,” she says. “As a mum, I felt like I dropped the ball.” John Chellew, a social worker who runs the School Refusal Clinic in Melbourne, says school avoidance can stem from anxiety about leaving the home caused by a combination of factors including social, emotional, behavioural and academic problems.It’s not the case that children “won’t go to school, but believe they can’t,” he says. “[They] feel they should go, and often they want to go … but they just feel overwhelmed with the social and academic demands of school.
Anecdotally, school refusal is increasing. The peer-run “School Can’t” Facebook group, for example, has grown from 900 members in June 2019 to 7700 today. The waitlist at the School Refusal Clinic has also ballooned since the return of face-to-face learning, says Chellew.