Destruction, not Resilience: MVA Mum Victoria Speaks with Sky News About the Reality of UK Schooling

UK parents face a school system designed to fit the average child.

For a slim majority, this is good enough. This 'average' child doesn't really exist, but a slim majority can make themselves fit into what the system was designed to expect.

For a significant minority, however, this is an expectation they are unable to meet. Whether it's down to a neurodivergent need, a mental health need, a physical health need, or a simple incompatibility between the school timetable and the life that child wants to live - the one-size-fits-all system does not fit nearly enough.

But this is only half the problem.

For millions of parents up and down the country every year who suddenly find their child has hit breaking point, many take what seems like a very reasonable course of action.

They allow their child to remain at home to address the immediate concerns around stress or anxiety, and then reach out to the school for help and advice.

This is what Victoria did, when her daughter became unable to go to school, and hoped that she would be able to access some level of support or guidance.

Instead, she was treated with hostility. Blamed for her daughter's absence, and threatened with unlawful fines, Victoria was offered no help beyond an EHCP process which is still ongoing more than a year later, and made to feel that there was ultimately no other option.

Thankfully, a friend recommended MVA, and Victoria's daughter is now getting the support she needs at a school that makes her happy, but this was essentially down to chance.

Which is why, on the week of MVA's Summer Festival, Victoria headed to Sky News to share her story and challenge the attitudes that stand in the way of millions of families every year.

Because the UK school sector isn't lacking in solutions, it's lacking in the embracement of those solutions.

Even within the Victoria's interview itself, presenters referred to absent children as 'school refusers', shifting the blame onto children themselves, and then raised the idea that children should be forced to go to school even if they find it impossible because it is important to 'toughen them up' in preparation for the adult world.

Victoria bravely pushed back on these ideas, saying that:

...the resilience [my daughter] was learning at school was not resilience. It was destruction of her mental health.

Because it's these attitudes that stand in the way of the millions of children and parents faced with a school system that doesn't suit them every year.

The alternative options are there, whether it's MVA or one of our many worthy competitors. Supply isn't the problem.

It's old ideas, assumptions, and a resistance to change that is deeply ingrained in all levels of the education landscape from the top levels of government down to local authorities across the UK, making authorities push for parents to overlook their child's struggles and conform to the mainstream whatever the cost.

At MVA, we don't think that's a cost worth paying.

A huge thank you to Victoria for speaking up for families all over the country, and being a voice for the change that is so desperately needed.

It's also a change that is, gradually, coming. MVA now works with more than 70 local authorities to support children who have been pushed out of the mainstream, with many LAs funding the child's place themselves.

But there are 382 local authorities in the UK, which is why stories like Victoria's are so important. We still have a long way to go.

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