School Refusal vs School Avoidance

School Refusal has gone through the roof the past few years across primary and secondary schools in Australia. 

But you might be asking “What exactly is School Refusal”?

Officially, School Refusal is when a student becomes very emotionally distressed or anxious about going to school, to the point that they refuse to attend. 

Further to this, school refusal as something that occurs when there are misunderstandings between the young person, the family, and the school, and a breakdown in effective communication has occurred.

You may have heard the term ‘school avoidance’ being used which is another word for school refusal and we use them interchangeably throughout our articles but we’d like to note that our preferred term is actually ‘school avoidance’ and this is because there is a difference between young people who “Wont” go to school as opposed to those who “Can’t” go to school.

Whether it be refusal or avoidance, having a third party host these discussions on parents behalf with the school and other professionals has a big difference to the outcome of young people engaging in school again.