Finding the flex to flourish

It's amazing how quickly a child can go from flourishing to crisis.

It's amazing how suddenly your family's world can change.

It's amazing how adversity enables you to see things differently.

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I’m writing this article as someone who has enjoyed a long and rewarding career in primary education, both as a class teacher and as a headteacher. More importantly though, I’m writing this as a parent – as the father of a 14 year old girl who has been suffering with anxiety and struggling with school for the last three years. It’s an eye-opening situation when the education system you believe in lets down somebody you love.

It's amazing how lived experience as a parent can challenge everything you thought you knew as a professional.

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My teaching career began way back at the end of the last millennium, when the world was a different place. The early part of my career coincided with a time of great optimism and investment in education. We had the "Every Child Matters" agenda. We had long-established school nurse teams and brand new Sure Start centres. I taught in one of the most deprived council wards in England. New Labour had pledged to eradicate child poverty by 2020. So we had healthy budgets and inter-connected support. So we had incredible innovation and serious ambition. It wasn’t perfect of course, but it felt to me that children were truly at the centre of what we were doing, both in my school and in our local authority.

In 2011, having spent twelve years at the chalkface, I was privileged to become the headteacher of an infant school, in the north-west of England. It marked the beginning of twelve years of headship, during which time I led a three-form entry infant school, then two primary schools.

One on my many responsibilities as a headteacher was to manage pupil attendance. Now in lots of schools, particularly larger primaries and secondaries, the actual duties of monitoring and managing attendance are often delegated, eg to other senior leaders or to pastoral or admin staff. However, early on in headship, I decided that I wanted to be directly involved in managing attendance in our school. That, I felt, would give me an invaluable insight into our children’s lives. It would help me to get to know them and their families well, and it would help me keep focused on meeting our children’s needs.

That meant it was me personally who monitored attendance data, at an individual, class and school level. It was me who knew about holidays and illness, patterns of absence and changing attendance. It was me who wrote the letters to parents about the importance of good attendance. It was me who held the meetings with parents (sometimes with an Education Welfare Officer) when absences were a concern. It was me who was interrogated about our attendance procedures during Ofsted inspections and me who handed out attendance certificates in end of term assemblies. And yes, it was me who told our school community that “Every day is unmissable!”

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But three years ago, my family's world changed. One of our daughters, then aged 11, found the transition to secondary school very difficult. Within a matter of weeks of starting, our bright, conscientious and fun-loving girl changed from healthy and thriving to ill and withdrawn.

Within just a few months, her initial worries developed into a full-blown anxiety disorder. There were headaches, panic attacks and vomiting. There were tears and tummy aches, missed meals and broken sleep. There were facial tics and dark thoughts. It was all, without a doubt, the hardest, most frightening situation we'd ever faced as parents.

If you've been through a situation like this, you'll know the harsh realities. There is no quick fix. There's no blueprint for what to do. You're navigating choppy waters without a compass. You’re desperately hoping for a life raft but it feels like you’re being thrown bricks.

Less than six months after starting her secondary education, my wife and I made the decision to pause our daughter's school attendance. Her anxiety symptoms were worsening each week. The school's adjustments (including a reduced timetable) weren't helping enough. We'd sought NHS support for our daughter's mental health, but there was no sign of the help she urgently needed.

School was on fire for our daughter, and trying to get her there each day was just compounding the harm. The school was concerned about her attendance. But we couldn’t make her attendance better because we couldn’t make her better. So we pulled our daughter out of the fire and we took stock.

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Three years have passed. During those three years, we've found ourselves to be in a situation faced by hundreds of thousands of families:With a child suffering and struggling, dependant upon a health system which is buckling and unable to respond swiftly enough, and an education system which lacks flexibility.

Flexibility. It’s invaluable.

As I write this today, my daughter is in school. She's recently started Year 10. We've spent the past three years repairing, rebuilding and, when it comes to her education, doing things differently. She’s not cured, but she is much healthier and happier than she was. She finds many aspects of school life difficult but, with ongoing adjustments and support, she’s no longer being made ill by the very education system which is supposed to make her flourish.

So what did we do differently? How did we get back from a mental health crisis and non-attendance to recovery and a successful return to education?

I must be honest here. Ours wasn’t, technically, a flexischooling arrangement. There was no precedent for that in her school, at the time of need. However, what we did was create bespoke, long-term provision in the spirit of flexischooling.

For the last three years, our daughter’s education has consisted of time at home and time in school. It’s been a balance of conventional classroom learning, self-led learning and home tuition/activities. At home, there’s been a balance of academic work, respite, fun, relaxation, exercise, outdoor projects and extra-curricular activities. It’s been entirely bespoke and hugely varied. Our provision has evolved organically, in line with our daughter’s changing health and needs. It’s helped, of course, that my wife and I are both qualified teachers. I’ve now left headship. It’s helped that, when we needed to do something differently, I had the time and capacity to be a central part of it.

When our daughter took her first steps back on the school premises - when she was still battling considerable anxiety – it wasn’t into a classroom or a lesson, nor anywhere near a teacher. Those steps were outside, at the school’s Gardening Club, with me by her side, and under the nurturing wing of the school’s groundskeeper. No walls. No curriculum. No prejudgement. A reset.

A little time with me present at Gardening Club led to a little time without me at Gardening Club. A little time by herself at Gardening Club led to a little time with friends at Gardening Club. A little time with friends in Gardening Club led to a little time with friends on the school field…and later in the school canteen…and later in the art room…with friends and classmates and a teacher.

In the time that has passed since those vital first steps, our daughter has been on a bespoke timetable, planned in partnership with her school. It’s been a balance of time in school and time at home. The timetable has grown and evolved, very steadily, as her health has improved. This hasn’t always been linear, which is why flexibility has been key.

Now the problem with part-time timetables and reduced timetables is that they often end up being too rigid. The scheduling has to be a certain way. For example, it can only last for a certain amount of time (which is invariably far too short). Or it has to include this lesson or that. Or it has to be full mornings by week three. This rigidity often becomes a huge stumbling block for families in situation like ours; the reduction in attendance is designed to help, yet the stipulations become just another barrier. Our daughter needed something different. We wanted something different, something far more intuitive, more child-led and…well, more flexible.

The world, in 2025, is a very different place to the world I first started teaching in. And when it comes to education, the truth is that a huge number of children are struggling. A great many face barriers which prevent them from attending school regularly. A great many others are struggling in school. Some are masking. Some are just about coping. Some children and young people no longer feel safe in school. Some aren’t having their needs met.

For a myriad of reasons, school isn’t working as it should for a considerable proportion of the pupil population. We could look at culture in education, political ideology, school funding, technology and social media. We could point to Covid and the impact of the pandemic or any number of other factors. But one thing’s certain: far too many children and young people aren’t thriving.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We have it within our gift to do things differently in education. The concept of school can be much more flexible than we have traditionally known it.

Steve Bladon

October 2025