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In this episode of the Future Learners podcast, Brett Campbell (CEO and co-founder of Euka) and Ellen Brown (co-founder and Head of Education) unpack one of the most misunderstood challenges parents face: school refusal. What it actually is, why it peaks in the middle of the year, and what a parent can do about it.

If your child has started dreading school, or mornings have become a battle, this conversation is a calm, practical place to begin.

This article is general information, not clinical advice. If you are worried about your child's mental health, please speak to your GP or a registered psychologist.

School refusal is not a child being difficult, and it is not a single bad morning. It is an ongoing emotional response that makes getting to school genuinely hard. Brett and Ellen separate stress from anxiety, explain the two very different groups of children who experience school refusal, and challenge the idea that success always means getting a child back into the classroom as fast as possible.

Key Points

What the data tells us

These numbers can feel heavy. The point isn't to alarm you. It's that if this is your family, you are far from alone.

• Australians make around 6.1 million searches a month for anxiety and mental health (across the whole population, not only children).
• The proportion of full-time students in Grades 1-10 attending at least 90% of the time fell from 77.8% in 2015 to 59.8% in 2024, roughly a 30% drop in regular attendance.
• Overall attendance dropped from 92.6% in 2015 to 88.6% over the same period.
• The ABS National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing found 38.8% of people aged 16-24 had a mental disorder in the past 12 months, with anxiety the most common group.
• One self-reported survey (the Monash Australian Youth Barometer) asked whether young Australians had felt anxiety or depression even once in the past year, and 98% said yes. Because the bar was "at least once", that headline tells us less than it first seems. As Brett notes, it's a number to read carefully, not to panic over.
• 27% of female adolescents aged 15-17 reported a serious mental illness in 2021, up from 16% in 2017. (Source: AIHW, Australia's youth: Mental illness.)
• Only about half of Australian adolescents with mental health problems actually seek treatment.
• 1 in 24 Australian children aged 5-17 (over 4%) are on ADHD medication. (Source: AIHW, ADHD medications dispensed over time.)

Why mid-year is when it often surfaces

• For children with a school-based trigger, the first term tends to simmer; by the second term, friendships and pressures "step up" and the trigger takes hold.
• Academic struggle that was manageable in term one compounds once the school year hits its stride.
• For children in the second group, a long build-up reaches a threshold, they can no longer "mask" what has been going on underneath, and it surfaces mid-year.

When this episode matters for your family

• Your child has an ongoing, disproportionate emotional response to going to school, not just the occasional off day.
• Mornings have become a battle, or your child is withdrawing from things they used to enjoy.
• You are trying to work out whether what you are seeing is stress, anxiety, or something that needs clinical support.
• You are weighing whether to remove your child from a school environment that isn't working.

What School Refusal Actually Is

The word "refusal" does a lot of damage. It makes it sound like a choice, the way you might refuse a second helping of dessert. As Ellen explains, that framing is wrong.

School refusal is not truancy, and it is not the occasional tummy ache or the rough morning after the holidays. It is something more persistent:

Every child wakes up some days not wanting to go. What sets school refusal apart is a disproportionate emotional response, sustained over a period of time, a couple of weeks or more.

Stress, Anxiety, or Something Deeper?

One of the most useful parts of the conversation is the distinction between stress and anxiety, because parents, understandably, can leap to the most worrying explanation.

Stress is a response to a real, present pressure. There is a clear cause: a test tomorrow, a fight with a friend, something unkind that was said. When the pressure passes, the stress fades.

In small doses it is normal, even useful.

Anxiety is the worry that stays after the trigger is gone, or that shows up when there is no trigger at all. It is anticipatory, a fear about what might happen.

It doesn't switch off when the situation resolves, and it can build on itself. When it becomes persistent and starts interfering with daily life, it tips from an emotion into a disorder.

Brett's clean way to hold the difference:

The Two Groups of Children

School refusal isn't one problem. Ellen describes two distinct groups, and the distinction matters because the path forward is different for each.

• A trigger at school. Bullying, a clash with a particular teacher, social anxiety, or academic struggle. Here the issue is environmental, something in the school is causing the response. Often it simmers in first term and takes hold in second term.
• Anxiety that isn't tied to school. It may start with "I don't want to go to school", but the same response then shows up at the weekend, at sport, or elsewhere. This is the group where clinical support may be needed, and where a long build-up has reached a threshold the child can no longer mask.

Working out which group your child is in, by trying to identify whether there is a clear trigger, is the first practical step.

Rethinking What "Success" Means

Perhaps the most important reframe in the episode is about the goal itself. Most advice treats success as getting the child back to school as fast as possible. Ellen pushes back hard on that:

Sometimes success is not going to school for a while. Removing a child from an environment that isn't working for them is not running away. It's giving them the space to rebuild, and to build the tools they will need next time something hard comes along. As Brett puts it, even six weeks spent helping a child rebuild is not six weeks lost.

This is where Euka fits for many families. Around 30% of families come to Euka looking for support with the intention of moving back into the schooling system, and that is entirely welcome. The goal is whatever is best for that child and family.

Euka's new Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling course covers exactly this, with modules on what removing a child looks like, the first week, the first 30 days, and the path forward.

Practical First Steps for Right Now

If you are in the middle of the year and worried about your child, the hosts suggest starting here:

1. Work out the root cause. You don't have to solve it, just identify it. Is it academic stress, a bullying situation, a clash with a teacher, or something that moves beyond school?
2. Don't rush to treat a predictable problem as a medical one. If the distress is predictable (every Sunday night, after holidays), start with small, practical strategies before reaching for medical or professional help.
3. Partner with the school if it's a good one. Part-days, a couple of hours in the morning, or specific days are common, workable arrangements.
4. Use a program like Euka alongside school. A child easing back in for an hour or two a day can keep learning at home, many find they're not just keeping up but getting ahead, which becomes one less thing feeding the anxiety. And you don't need to be enrolled as a homeschooler to access the Euka program.
5. Reframe success around your child, not the system.

Frequently Asked Questions

Have a question for Brett and Ellen? Share it on the show, your question could feature in a future episode.

Why This Episode Matters

School refusal is rising, and the data backs up what many parents are feeling. But the most useful shift this episode offers isn't a statistic, it's a change in how to think about the problem:

• Name it accurately. "School can't" is closer to the truth than "refusal". It is an emotional response, not defiance.
• Separate stress from anxiety. Not every hard morning is a disorder, and not every disorder looks dramatic at first.
• Redefine success. If the environment is the problem, removing your child from it is not failure, it is the start of the rebuild.

Your Family, Your Journey

There is no prize for pushing through alone. Ask for help, lean on the people around you, and know that your family's path doesn't have to look like anyone else's.

If you are even considering time away from school, Euka can help, from registration to reporting, so you can take that off your plate and focus on your child. For a deeper walk through making the move mid-year, listen to the previous episode on starting homeschooling in the middle of the school year.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Enrol at Euka, start any time, transition smoothly
• Explore the Euka program, how Euka works, in detail
• Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling: a free course for parents considering the move
• Future Learners Podcast: all episodes