Understanding EBSA

What is Emotionally Based School Avoidance?

Emotionally based school avoidance: ‘a broad umbrella term used to describe a group of children and young people who have severe difficulty in attending school due to emotional factors, often resulting in prolonged absences from school. (West Sussex Guidance, 2018, p.3)

Emotionally Based school Avoidance (EBSA) is a significant issue affecting nearly 3 in 10 secondary school pupils.

EBSA is more than just a strong dislike for school, it is a term used for children and young people who have severe difficulty attending school due to emotional factors. This umbrella term covers both those children who have stopped attending school altogether, but also includes children who experience high levels of anxiety about attending school, who struggle to attend regularly, or struggle to attend certain lessons, or other parts of school life.

It is important that we look at EBSA as school avoidance and not truancy or refusal, as this implies that the child is being manipulative and not experiencing an emotional barrier.

Research suggests there tends to be four main reasons why children and young people experience EBSA (Kearney & Silberman, 1990)

1) To avoid uncomfortable feelings brought on by situations at school, e.g. fear of the toilets, busyness in corridors between classes, exams

2) To avoid social situations that are stressful at school, e.g. bullying, reading out loud in class, working as part of a group, being left out

3) To reduce separation anxiety or gain or maintain attention from significant others, e.g. family members.

4) To pursue tangible reinforcers outside of school, e.g. playing video games, going shopping, other enjoyable activities etc.

“EBSA usually occurs when stress exceeds support, which risks are greater than resilience and when ‘pull factors’ that promote school non-attendance overcome the ‘push’ factors to encourage attendance” Thambirajah et al., 2008

Croft Community School are committed to supporting all of our pupils and understand that EBSA is not a black and white term and is more like a spectrum of needs. Thinking about the four factors, we need to think about the push-pull factors. What pushes a child away from the school? And what pulls them towards their home?

Using this information, we can create a personalised intervention programme that with help pull the child back to school and push away, gently, from the home and break the anxiety cycle that is preventing the child from attending school or parts of school.

The EBSA officer will work with your child or young person to build positive relationships and trust. When the child or young person is ready, the EBSA officer will then begin talking to your child or young person about anxiety and exploring their anxieties. Looking at how they it makes them feel, the sensations they feel and the behaviours that they might display when they are in a difficult situation at school. As this is individual to the child or young person, this will be done somewhere the child feels most comfortable.

Once we have captured your child or young person’s needs, we can then start to look at how we can best support your child or young person to make steps forward into attending school. This process will go at the pace of your child or young person and will be a complete unique plan, to meet their needs.

Meet the team

Miss V Elcock – Deputy head teacher, overall responsibility of attendance and the behaviour support services offered at Croft Community School.

Miss R Quinn – EBSA Officer