School Refusal in 2026: What It Really Is, and How to Help Your Child | 45

Welcome to the episode

Brett Campbell:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Future Learners. I am your host, Brett Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Euka Future Learning. I’m joined by my amazing co-host, as always, the one and only, the co-founder and Head of Education, Ellen Brown. How are you, Ellen?

Ellen Brown:

Very well, thanks, Brett.

Brett Campbell:

Excellent. Today’s topic is a pretty big one, and it’s big in the sense that the impact of what we’re about to speak about is vitally important to, obviously, parents who are seeking to homeschool, but also our children. And what I mean by that is we’re going to be talking about the infamous school refusal. Yeah, we’ve seen lots of media about it, we’ve seen lots of conversations about it, but school refusal is not just about a child not wanting to go to school, it’s obviously much deeper, and there’s lots of nuance to it. So our mission today, Ellen, is to unpack that to the best of our abilities, especially given the timing of when we’re recording this episode. Yeah, we’re reaching that sort of middle-of-the-year stage. And interestingly enough, when you look at all the Google search trends and so forth, the middle of the year generally peaks up higher as it relates to school refusal, and parents seeking out more information, and seeking out tests they could be doing to try and see if their child is actually suffering from anxiety, depression, et cetera. And just a quick one off the bat: 6.1 million searches a month in Australia for anxiety and mental health. And that’s across the board, of course, not just related to children. But we’ve got some pretty scary stats, especially as parents ourselves, that I’ll share today in relation to how our children are being affected. But Ellen, I think a really good starting point is: as a parent, you’re sitting there getting this constant sort of school refusal, like, I can’t go to school, I don’t want to go to school. How do we firstly look at and define what school refusal is versus a child just not wanting to go to school?

What school refusal actually is

Ellen Brown:

I think labels are a really tricky one. That word “school refusal” can be used in the wrong way a lot, especially when it comes to school or in the media. School refusal is not truancy, where you go off and play hooky. That’s not school refusal. School refusal is not where your child says, I’ve got a tummy ache and I don’t want to go to school, or after the school holidays finds there’s a day or two where they’re just struggling to get there, or there’s tears. That’s not what school refusal is. School refusal is where there’s an ongoing emotional response that is disruptive in a way that makes it really difficult to get the child to school. And it’s ongoing. That’s the important thing. Because every child wakes up some days and says, I don’t want to go. And so it’s really important that we be very clear that it’s something that’s a disproportionate response, an emotional response to going to school that holds a child back. And that’s after a long period of time, a couple of weeks of that, then we would start to say this is school refusal.

What the data tells us

Brett Campbell:

And to put some data around that, because, again, it’s always important to be led by data, not just sort of noise in the media. And you might just be in your own echo chamber as well on social media, and it might feel like it’s the thing. But when we look at the data, the proportion of full-time students in Grades 1 to 10 attending at least 90% of the time fell from 77.8% in 2015. So in 2015, 77.8% would attend at least 90%. That dropped considerably now into 2024, and that’s the latest data that I have here, from 77.8% to 59.8%, which is a massive drop. When you look at overall attendance rates, the actual overall attendance rates, to bolster onto that, dropped from 92.6% in 2015 to now 88.6%. So not as steep a climb, but that’s for overall attendance. So when you look at the children attending at least 90%, we’ve dropped down circa 30% in that actual attendance, which, there’s a multitude of different reasons and so forth, but it absolutely directly correlates to this concept of school refusal. Let me share some more data here to bring to light the seriousness of what we’re really talking about. Nearly 40% of young people have a diagnosable mental health disorder in any given year. So the ABS National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing, which is the gold-standard source, they use clinical diagnostic criteria, not just sort of self-reported, found that 38.8% of people aged 16 to 24 (so we’re talking more about senior school students here, teenagers) had a 12-month mental disorder, with anxiety being the most common group. So 40% of students there. Now, again, the really scary stat that I wasn’t really going to share, but I think is important just for awareness, because I broke something up there that’s very important. There’s this clinical diagnostic criteria that you can truly go through and ask a series of questions. But there was a study done where… let me just find that one. Sorry, I’ve lost that one now. I’ve got a string full of numbers here. Where are we, where are we?

“School can’t”, not “won’t”

Ellen Brown:

While you’re finding that, Brett, I will just say that your stats there really bring something to light. The word “refusal” in “school refusal” tends to make you think, you know, I would refuse to eat chocolate because I’m making the decision not to eat chocolate. When we’re talking about school refusal, the word “refusal” is probably wrong. And a lot of psychologists have called it “school can’t” rather than refusal. It’s not a choice the child’s making. It’s an emotional response the child’s having. And so it’s really important that we understand this is not just a child who’s being defiant. Go on, share what you were looking for.

Stress, anxiety, or something deeper?

Brett Campbell:

Yeah, great. No, great distinction, that’s a great distinction, actually, because this specific study that was done, from the Monash Australian Youth Barometer, they actually reported that 98%… so let me repeat that: 98% of young Australians had feelings of anxiety or depression at least once in the past year. Now, I wasn’t going to share that, because it’s quite a dreadful statistic when you hear that essentially every single child that was asked has experienced it. But the nuance to the study, and this is why, again, hearing numbers is one thing, but defining where did that number come from, what does that really mean , that study was a self-reported study, and it was framed around “at least once.” So there’s a fair bit of nuance there. Because I remember talking to you just before the episode, I’m like, if I was asked if I’d felt some anxiety or depression over the last year, and it was just sort of a “hey, have you felt this?”, it’s quite natural to go, yeah, probably. Yeah, I’ve had some really stressful moments, so yeah, I’ve felt anxiety. But when I stop and look, I’m like, well, is it actually anxiety, or have I just had a number of very serious stressful situations? Which is something I want to create a big distinction for, because as parents, we can get quite taken away from a circumstance that’s affecting our children. And depending on if you’re a general optimist or you’re naturally a pessimist in the way that you view things in life, you will either see that the cup is half full or half empty, and you may naturally provide your own diagnosis that, my kid’s got anxiety because they’re stressed, or there’s this situation happening. So I’ll share a couple of key distinctions so that, listening, you might be able to go, okay, so this probably sounds more about stress than anxiety and/or depression. So stress is a response to a real, present pressure. There’s a clear cause, like a test for tomorrow, or they’ve had a fight with a friend, or someone said something unkind to them, and when that pressure passes, the stress starts to fade. And in small doses, stress is actually normal, and it’s even useful. Anxiety, the worry that stays when the trigger’s gone, or shows up when there’s no trigger at all. It’s anticipatory, it’s a fear about what might happen. It doesn’t switch off when the situation’s resolved, and actually it can build on itself. And when it becomes persistent and starts interfering with your daily life, it then tips from an emotion into what we’d call a disorder. So stress says, I have too much to do. Anxiety says, something bad is going to happen and I can’t stop thinking about it. So it’s quite a different thing. Anxiety’s actually much more in the long term; it’s something that sticks around. Stress, of course, with the right strategies, you can start to create a diffusion on stress. Anxiety, very hard to do that.

The two groups of children

Ellen Brown:

Yeah. And, you know, interestingly enough, with school refusal, both of those two avenues play a part. So, as a parent, the very first thing we need to do is work out what the trigger is, if there is a trigger. That’s the question. Because if there’s a trigger, like you say, there’s bullying at school, or there’s a conflict with a particular teacher, or there’s some social anxiety, or there’s just those kinds of things, well, that’s one particular bucket of kids. And then the other is where that anxiety isn’t localised at school. It may start there; you might find at this time of year it starts because of the “I don’t want to go to school,” but then you might find on the weekend it’s something else, it’s too hot, or it’s too this, or other things will begin to become a problem. So there are two groups of kids that struggle with school refusal, and that’s a really important distinction, because the solution to both is a little bit different.

Brett Campbell:

Yeah, absolutely. And I want to just share a couple more final data points here to paint the picture. Girls are carrying the heaviest load. So, our daughters, 27% of female adolescents aged, again, the teenage, so 15 to 17, reported a serious mental illness in 2021, up from 16% in 2017, and reported an anxiety disorder up from 15% in 2017. So it’s almost like a double increase. It’s essentially almost doubled over those series of years. And, you know, to your point, I think it’s a good one, the trigger is the main thing. It’s like if you have allergies and you’re allergic to a cat and you’ve got cats around your property all the time, it’s probably a consideration: well, how do I remove the, I shouldn’t have said a cat, I should have said a plant, because I know we’ve got lots of cat lovers here, me too. But how do we fix this? Like, there’s something that I’m allergic to, there’s that plant outside, and every season it’s killing the nose, the hay fever. Yeah. Sometimes it’s that removal of said thing. Now, it might be a series of things as well, and that’s the hard part, because very rarely is it ever just one specific trigger. One trigger might trigger something else that triggers another thing, and then there’s a series of elements. But it starts there, and this is where we relate this back to school refusal, and having an influx of children starting homeschooling in the middle of the year. When there are situations such as anxiety or severe bullying, there really isn’t a slow way to fix it. You’d have to get in, remove, change scenery, change the entire environment, because then you allow the rebuild to start taking place. So let’s talk about it, Ellen, why do you think it’s the mid-year that we see the largest influx? What’s the build-up to that?

Why it surfaces mid-year

Ellen Brown:

Well, I’ll talk about those two buckets. So the first bucket, where there is a trigger in school, you may have found that you’ve got a child that is being bullied, for example. That first term, often these things are simmering away, and by second term everybody is more comfortable in that environment and things step up. So it’s not unusual that something like bullying might take a hold in the second term. Other issues around school, they may find that in that first term they were having conflict or academically struggling. But that first term, when you’re a teacher, you just kind of slowly trying to work out where everybody’s at, and then you hit second term, you hit your stride. So that can sometimes be an increase in stress for a child that’s already struggling academically. So that’s the bucket where we’re not talking about a disorder of any sort. We’re talking about an environmental trigger that’s causing school refusal, and that often happens in second term, because all those kind of nicey-nicey first-term things are over, we’ve got new desks and new friends and all of that, and then the reality of that school pressure really hits in second term. So that’s one bucket.

Brett Campbell:

And also, just to that, Ellen, just very quickly on that one point you’re talking about, because it’s so important, it’s also that compounding effect of something. Yeah, as humans, we have a very, very strong tolerance to things. But over time, it’s like the metaphor: you know, streams weren’t created overnight, they were created over years and years and years of drops of water just flowing through, and slowly, over many, many decades and centuries, it creates these flowing creeks. Just like us as humans, each of us has a different set of tolerance that we could put up with, some of us shorter than others. But it does start to take that compounding effect as a large toll.

Ellen Brown:

And actually, interesting you should say that, because that is where the second bucket comes in. Now, I’m obviously not a psychologist, but I’ve spent a lot of time with school psychologists, and seeing how all of a sudden you have a child, and this is in the disorder bucket, that went from being outgoing and quite confident to all of a sudden withdrawn and not wanting to be part of things. And often it’s not that this all of a sudden happened; it’s because they’ve reached a threshold where they can’t just mask whatever’s been going on underneath, because as they were younger, they were able to. They had a quirky personality, they had little things about them that you go, now looking back… But they get a bit older, they get to the middle of the year, and so we find that’s where sometimes all of a sudden things like anxiety will come up, and you’ll think, I wouldn’t have thought my child was anxious at all. But they’ve reached a point where they’re not masking any longer, and they’re at an age now where it becomes quite apparent that there’s a clinical support needed there.

Brett Campbell:

And to that, that’s asking for help in disguise as well. As parents, it’s our job to identify that something is different, something doesn’t seem normal compared to how it used to be. And, you know, you’ve got to remember, many adults don’t know how to ask for help, or explain how they’re currently feeling, and it comes out in different manners. So don’t expect your child to be emotionally intelligent enough, now, some are, and some will, absolutely. And this is all about how you communicate as a family, as parent and child and so forth, and create that environment where they feel safe to be able to express anything and everything to you. So, very important to see those little telltale signs and provide that environment where a conversation can start. But I will say this, you said this a little bit earlier, Ellen and myself, we are not trained psychologists. I probably read more books on psychology than most trained psychologists, but I am not a trained psychologist. And this is what we’re really trying to do here: bring light to this as a conversation, so that you can then, if required or needed, or you think you could, we encourage you to then go and seek that next level of support and so forth from trained professionals. So we’ll put that out there, make sure that’s very, very well known. One thing, Ellen, that stood out to me when I was looking through a lot of this data and statistics is that only half of Australian adolescents with mental health problems actually seek treatment. There’s a few pieces to that. There’s the actual inability, in most cases, for families to even get support. You know, I’ll go on record and say there’s months-long waiting lists sometimes, even to talk to trained psychologists, et cetera. But why do you think we’re only seeing half the amount of people sort of actually go and seek treatment?

Ellen Brown:

I think because we’re talking about a group of young people who, quite naturally at that time of life, become, we’re developing as humans and as adults, but there’s all that confusion about what they want to share and what they don’t want to share, and is this normal, and they’re all in their own head. And so it’s interesting when you watch a child go from being that kid that’ll tell you everything to a child that you actually have to prod and ask questions of. You know, it’s a natural part, because if you met an adult that told you everything like a five-year-old, it would be very odd. So it’s a natural part to become more careful about what you share and what you don’t share. But in those teenage years, you can often find that’s the time where there is a lot less disclosure of what’s going on emotionally, and they’re sharing with the wrong people. They’re sharing with people online, they’re sharing with each other. So they’re trying to get advice and support from other young people who have the same struggles. And that’s why I think they’re not thinking, I’ll go and get some actual help.

A listener question

Brett Campbell:

Yeah, so let’s do a real-world example here, Ellen. So something that we’re going to start doing with this program as well is we’re going to be seeking listener questions and so forth. And we’ve got a couple here already. I’ll share one of them with you, and then I’ll get your take on it, and where do you think the best starting point for this person was? So this is from a listener: my nine-year-old has stomach aches every Sunday night. Is this anxiety, or am I overreacting? How would you… what would you say to them?

Ellen Brown:

I would say you’re not overreacting, because the child is telling you in their own way that there’s something that’s stressful. I would, but, not being a psychologist, I wouldn’t put it into the second bucket of anxiety, because it’s predictable. We can see the problem is their feelings about going to school, and something like that may naturally take its course. It may just slowly dissipate over a week or two weeks or three weeks, you know. It’s not something that you have to straight away say, right, we need to seek professional help. Honestly, it’s one of the things that concerns me most when schools will very quickly say, the child’s unhappy, they don’t want to come, let’s get professional help straight away, and we’re going to look at this from a medical situation rather than a situational one. So, in the case where it’s a predictable thing, and you’ll find it’s after school holidays, or on a Friday, or on a Sunday night, then you’d start with the small things. If your child’s going to school, you’ll go and talk to the teacher. Is there anything the teacher can see that’s going on? Or is there a way around this where, Monday mornings, that child can go a little bit earlier and do something nice to help in the classroom? So it’s about finding strategies that you can help with. It might be making sure they help with their lunch the night before, and put something special in. There’s lots of ways that you can get around something that is predictable. And at this stage, if it’s only on a Sunday and then Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night they’re okay, then you’ll know that they’re actually in a situation they’re okay with. It’s just trying to get that change from the weekend to the week. I mean, everybody can struggle on a Sunday night. So I would say I wouldn’t raise the big alarm bells; I’d just put some strategies in place.

Before reaching for medication

Brett Campbell:

Yeah. And the key thing that you said there that I just want to double-tap on is: yeah, before we rush to the, let’s call it, professional support, that can quite often, and in the majority, lead to the medicated path as well. You know, when we look at the data here, just even with ADHD, which in itself is a very wide spectrum of diagnoses, you look at 1 in 24 kids in Australia aged 5 to 17 on ADHD medication. It’s like over 4% of our youth population, which is quite high. And now, ADHD doesn’t necessarily always relate to anxiety and mental health, but, you know, the medicated route in itself is one that, I speak for myself personally, is one that I would only ever want to pursue if that was sort of the last resort, not sort of the first resort. You know, which is very, very important. If we look at some practical strategies, Ellen, for a family right now, they’re currently mid-year, and, you know, we actually just the previous episode to this talked about joining homeschooling in the middle of the year and so forth, so we won’t go into that too deeply now, but, nuanced for a family who does have a child that they believe is suffering from anxiety and/or depression: what are the first steps that they should consider right now?

First steps, and reframing success

Ellen Brown:

The first step is to try and work through what the root cause is of that. So it doesn’t mean you have to solve the root cause. Is it an academic stress? Is it a bullying situation? Is it a clash between the teacher and the child? Not all children and teachers click, you know, and that’s a whole year that relationship’s got to go on. So is it those things? Then if it’s those things, it’s an environmental problem, and withdrawing a child is quite legitimate in this situation, you know. So first thing: is it something that you can put your finger on, or vaguely even? Or is it something that moves away from school? And that usually takes some time to work out. You’ll be trying to solve “is my child being bullied,” and all of a sudden they’ll start getting anxious on Saturday at soccer, and you’ll realise, okay, this is something we may need to go and seek some professional help and get some clinical help for, because this is something that is switching or growing. So both of those things, you want to find out exactly where you’re at first. And I guess the other thing is, I’d want to reframe success. This is the thing that, you know, in all of the information that I’ve looked at, it’s always that success is getting the child over whatever it is and back to school. Which doesn’t make any sense. If there’s an environmental problem, the child’s not the problem, it’s the environment that’s not working for that child, then success is removing them from that environment and giving them an environment where they can flourish. So I really think that’s a big one. And there’s very little information about the fact that success for a child that’s got school refusal may be not going to school. Or it may be taking time out of school and moving back in later. But just thinking the fastest route back to school is the answer, or the solution, or the reward for doing a good job, that’s going to come back later.

Brett Campbell:

Yeah. And to double-tap on a point you just made: success is different for everyone. And the pressure that we as parents do put on ourselves, no, if I have to remove my child, I’ve got to get them back in as soon as I can, because they’ve got to do X, Y, Z. And it’s like, well, look, in the overall scheme of it all, even if your child missed out on six weeks of school, and you didn’t come to Euka and we helped and supported you, let’s just say you did nothing for six weeks, that six weeks of you spending time working through, helping them, helping them rebuild and build the tools that they need to develop to help them next time this may occur in their life. Because we don’t want to get into a point where we’re just extracting and running away from every circumstance that creates too much pressure. So there’s a fine balance. Like, now I say, if your child is suffering anxiety, you absolutely rip them from that place, and you figure out: is that even a place you would go back to? In a lot of cases, it’s more in the way in which we, even parents and children, are thinking about the situation. It’s hard to rethink or see something through a different set of lenses when you’re stuck in it. When you can remove yourself and you can look at it, and you can help support them, help them build the willpower, help them build the ability to understand why this may be happening, doesn’t mean it’s right, but to understand, as soon as you get a different perspective on why this might be happening, you can understand that, maybe this thing isn’t as big as what it initially felt like to me, because now you can see it for what it is, and not bigger or something different than what it actually is. So that’s a really big one as well. And that’s where, like, myself and Ellen, we’re unbelievable advocates of people removing your children from an environment, then putting them in an environment to rebuild them. That’s why Euka exists, in many cases, to support a large cohort of those types of families. And in some cases, it’s not a mental, like, it’s not a straight-up anxiety or disorder situation. It’s simply an environmental situation. So I want to make that very clear that I’m not advocating as soon as there’s an issue or a problem, let’s just keep fleeing. But there are certain situations that absolutely need to be managed, and for us it’s all about helping the child rebuild, and if going back to school, and in many cases around 30% of people who come to Euka are coming because they’re coming home from school with intentions to make it back to the schooling system at some point. And that’s amazing, and we absolutely love and support that. Because it’s about whatever is right for that child and that family. And as long as it’s done in the way that is going to provide the best outcome, then that’s the role that we play.

Working full-time: partnering with school

Ellen Brown:

Yeah, so everybody’s experience is going to be different here, because some schools are very experienced and very supportive. Most schools are experienced now, because this is not something that’s new anymore, and there are policies in place and things like that. But every child is different, so don’t feel as though you have to bow to pressure when they say, this is how we’re going to do it. You can work with the school, if you’ve got a good school to work with, that will say things like, let’s do part-days, you know, let’s do a couple of hours in the morning, let’s do certain days. There’s all kinds of ways that they’ll work around it, and you’ll need to be the advocate for your child and share what’s working and what’s not working. The way that Euka can work in that kind of situation, and can be very helpful, is to partner, you can actually partner with the school. And that means that if your child’s only going to school for an hour or two in the morning, because you’ve got a plan in place of gradually moving back into school, and that is certainly a very common way that a school will address school refusal, so let’s just come for an hour and get that child in a better spot, if that’s the case, then knowing that you can do something like a Euka program at home means you haven’t got that building anxiety that the child has got, that they’re missing work. Because there’s nothing worse than trying to deal with an anxiety situation and then having an academic situation on top of that, which causes anxiety. So having the Euka program to work alongside what they’re doing for the small time at school means that they can come home and get that confidence that, actually, guess what? I’m getting ahead when I’m at home. And that’s just one thing they can tick off in that anxiety stage. Whether or not, and that’s if it’s an anxiety situation; if it’s a bullying one or a social one, that’s a different thing altogether, but knowing that even when you’re at school, you can still do Euka at home, you’re not enrolled as a homeschooler because you’re enrolled at a school, means that you can have that as a support mechanism alongside school. And it means that you, as the parent, can focus on your child, because Euka’s taking care of the content and the learning. You don’t have to spend weeks looking for content, because we’ve got it sorted. So it’s an easy way to, again, make sure you’re looking after your family. And that’s, that’s a great option that you have in that situation.

Closing thoughts

Brett Campbell:

Yeah, excellent. And look, to wrap this up, I’ll end by saying: there is no prize for pushing through alone. Like, ask for help, lean on other people around you, and know that the path that your family is on might not look like everyone else’s. And that’s completely okay. In fact, that is absolutely okay. Your job was never to get your child to fit the system. Your job’s to get your child to feel safe enough to be able to grow. So, whatever that looks like for your family, I believe you’ve absolutely got this. You’re not doing it on your own. And to every parent who’s in the thick of it right now: you’re doing better than you think, your child is luckier than they know, and there’s always a way forward. So with that said, look after yourselves, and we will see you on the next episode.