School Can't - Reframing the Pathologised Language of "School Refusal" to be more Affirming and Supportive
- milespovey
- Jul 16
- 5 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
What is School Can't?
The term "school refusal" is used by mental health professionals, educators and researchers to describe the severe anxiety and emotional distress a student experiences in relation to attending mainstream schooling. It's distinctly different from wagging — a defiant act — because it's rooted in trauma and anxiety, not defiance.
I believe "school refusal" is an inaccurate, negative term. "School can't" is far more accurate, and it's the term I'll use from here on.
Our story
We are not strangers to school can't in our household. Of our three children, only our youngest is still in mainstream schooling. The other two are in alternative education or home schooling.
Both children who no longer attend mainstream school survived primary school — one of them thrived, the other always needed significant support — but for both, high school is where things quickly fell apart. The overnight increase in expectations — having each subject in a different classroom with a different teacher, having a locker, needing to remember which books to take when — was just the start of it. When they didn't have all the information they needed, when things weren't explained explicitly and were confusing, or worse, when sarcasm or idioms were used with someone who is extremely literal, it created so much confusion — especially when they did exactly what they were told to do, only to be then told they were doing the wrong thing.
Covid and the surge in numbers
Covid really highlighted just how many students were struggling with schooling. Our youngest would take three hours to do one small task — not because he was being difficult on purpose, and not because he couldn't be bothered. He could not understand why he was being asked to do schoolwork at home. School is for schoolwork; home is for relaxing. School teachers teach, mum and dad parent.
He wasn't the only one finding it impossible to reconcile. Prior to Covid, there were already many students struggling in the school system, with few alternatives for education that suited their style of learning. At least that is starting to change, albeit slowly.
During Covid, a lot of people — in Melbourne in particular — really suffered with their mental health. For some, especially many adults, this resulted in a diagnosis of conditions such as ADHD. For some children, it was the start of their school can't journey. For others, they had been on the journey for a long time.
There are many other things that account for the struggles, particularly for autistic students. Some of these include PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance — an anxiety-driven need to resist everyday demands), monotropic thinking (a tendency to focus deeply on one interest or task at a time, making sudden switches between subjects and rooms especially hard), the double empathy problem (the idea that miscommunication between autistic and non-autistic people runs both ways, rather than being a deficit on one side) and more. I've written about some of these previously — you can find those articles on the blog.
A rigid system, slowly catching up
One upside to so many students struggling is that the system is finally being forced to respond and offer more support. But the schooling system can be quite rigid and strict, and it tends to follow the latest trends. For example, when my middle child started prep (foundation), the current theory was that play-based learning worked well for a lot of students, based on the research at the time. It did not work well for her at all.
The students would come into class; they had a multitude of games and activities to choose from and could choose which other students to play with. The classrooms were open plan, with the doors of three classrooms open, and children able to come and go throughout the three rooms. The rooms were full of chatting, laughing and playing. They were very loud.
For some children, this would be amazing. For my daughter, who was already so stressed, she was worrying whether she had the correct uniform on — "Are you sure it's not sports day, mummy?" She was worried whether she'd forgotten a book, whether she had her pencil case, whether she had the right food for lunch. It was on her mind to remember to go to the toilet — how to get there, whether she had to go with another student.
She would be so overwhelmed she could not speak. If anyone asked her anything at all, she would smile sweetly, hoping they would leave her be so she could fade into the background. She was doing all she could to hold everything inside, so nobody could tell there was anything wrong. She held it in so well — but the pressure built and built all day.
Once she finally got home to her safe space, she would let it all out. Crying, screaming, banging on things, throwing herself on the floor. She still didn't have the words to express what was happening, let alone why, or how to fix it. Always, no matter what happened, she would turn it back on herself and conclude she was bad, she was broken, she was less than, and she did not deserve to be here. It was heartbreaking and couldn't be further from the truth — but in her mind, in her world, this was her truth.
It's stories like hers — repeated in households across the country — that are slowly pushing the system to offer the kind of flexibility it didn't have a decade ago.
Finding what works
We have finally found alternative schooling that works for the two of my children who could no longer cope with mainstream. For my eldest, community schooling is what he settled on. For my middle child, we started with home schooling, then unschooling, and she's now settled into online learning through a flexible learning centre.
School can't is not an easy journey to navigate — it is often very traumatic for both students and parents. But on the other side of it, there's a version of school that can work for each of them — one which works with their strengths, supports them where they are at, and allows them to learn in a way that works for them, so that they can flourish.
There are some wonderful resources and supports out there. Please see below for a few places you can access support for school can't.
School Can’t Supports:
School Can’t Australia
Facebook support group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/schoolphobiaschoolrefusalaustralia
Amaze – Autism Connect
Email: info@autismconnect.com.au
Phone: 1300 308 699
ACD – Association for Children with a Disability
Website: https://acd.org.au/
Email: mail@acd.org.au
Phone: 03 9880 7000
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