September 2026
Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA) can make attending school feel overwhelming for children and young people. Why does it happen and, more importantly, what can you do if your child is struggling? In this blog, I explore the topic of EBSA, why attending school matters, and how to support someone through this challenging time…
September has arrived. For some children, that means new school shoes, seeing friends again and getting back into familiar routines. For others, the return to school can bring a very different set of emotions.
Perhaps your child starts complaining about tummy aches or headaches. Maybe they become tearful or angry when it’s time to get ready. They might struggle to sleep on Sunday night, spend hours worrying about the next day or repeatedly ask if they can stay at home. And sometimes the distress becomes so great that getting through the school gates feels impossible. This is something we are hearing much more about these days, often under the name Emotionally Based School Avoidance, or EBSA.
If your child is struggling in this way, the first thing I want to say is this: they aren’t simply being difficult. And you haven’t necessarily done anything wrong. There is usually a reason why school has started to feel so challenging.
What is Emotionally Based School Avoidance?
EBSA describes a situation where a child or young person finds it difficult to attend school because of significant emotional distress. You may have heard the term “school refusal” used in the past. EBSA is a more recent term and, in my view, a much more helpful one. Why? Because “school refusal” can sound as though a child has simply decided that they don’t want to go, but that isn’t necessarily what is happening at all.
A child experiencing EBSA may desperately want to go to school. They may want to see their friends, keep up with their work and be like everyone else. They may understand that school is important but still feel completely unable to make themselves go.
The word “avoidance” describes what is happening rather than necessarily what the child wants. And the word “emotionally” is important too. There is usually something underneath the avoidance. It might be anxiety, worries about friendships, bullying, academic pressure, perfectionism, sensory overload, separation anxiety or difficulties associated with neurodivergence. It could be a particularly difficult transition, a change in circumstances or a combination of several things that have gradually become overwhelming.
EBSA isn’t a psychiatric diagnosis in its own right. It is a way of understanding a pattern of behaviour where emotional distress is affecting school attendance.
Is EBSA a new problem?
It certainly feels like a relatively new term. However, the problem itself isn’t new. Children have struggled with attending school because of anxiety and fear for generations. Previously, you might have heard terms such as school refusal or school phobia. What has changed is our understanding.
Instead of asking, “Why won’t this child go to school?”, we are increasingly asking, “What is happening for this child that is making school feel so difficult?” That shift matters, because it moves us away from blame and towards curiosity. It also recognises that what looks like avoidance on the outside can actually be a sign of a nervous system that is feeling overwhelmed.
How common is it?
This is one of the difficult things about EBSA because there isn’t currently a national UK statistic specifically measuring EBSA. Instead, the data looks at school absence more broadly. And those figures are significant.
In England, the overall absence rate for the 2024/25 academic year was 6.78%, compared with 4.73% in 2018/19 before the pandemic. In 2024/25, 18.14% of pupils were persistently absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of their possible sessions. That compares with 10.86% in 2018/19. There has been some improvement since the particularly high absence rates seen just after the pandemic. However, the picture is not completely straightforward.
In autumn 2025/26, for example, persistent absence increased slightly to 18.10%, compared with 17.79% in autumn 2024/25. Secondary school persistent absence was 21.53% and special school persistent absence was 35.09%. These figures don’t tell us how many children have EBSA – many children are absent because of physical illness or other circumstances. But they do tell us something important. School attendance has changed significantly since before Covid, and we are still dealing with the consequences.
Is EBSA more common at certain ages?
It can happen at any age, but there are some points in a child’s education when difficulties can become more apparent. Starting school can be challenging for some children. Separation from parents or carers, new routines and an unfamiliar environment can all trigger anxiety.
The move from primary to secondary school can be another significant transition. Let’s consider what that actually involves. A child may go from knowing virtually everyone in their school to suddenly being surrounded by hundreds of people. They may have different teachers for different subjects, have to find their way around a much bigger building, manage changing classrooms, cope with more homework and navigate increasingly complicated social relationships. Not to mention the fact that this may be the first time they have had to make their own way to and from school using transport such as buses or trains. That’s a lot of change.
And then there is adolescence, when the brain is already going through enormous developmental changes – concerns about friendships, belonging and what other people think can become particularly powerful.
The national attendance data also show that absence tends to be higher in secondary school. In 2024/25, persistent absence was 13.5% in state-funded primary schools compared with 24.3% in secondary schools. Again, this isn’t evidence that all secondary school absence is EBSA. But it does highlight how important the secondary school years can be.
What does Covid have to do with it?
Covid didn’t create school anxiety. Children were experiencing school avoidance long before 2020. But I think it’s fair to say that the pandemic changed the landscape.
For a period, children didn’t have to go to school at all. Their routines disappeared. Friendships changed. Opportunities to practise navigating social situations were reduced. For some children, home became a place of safety and school became something unfamiliar. Then, when schools reopened, many children were expected to return to normal. Except things didn’t necessarily feel normal anymore. Some children found the transition back extremely difficult.
The attendance figures give us a sense of just how significant the change has been. Persistent absence in England was 10.86% in 2018/19. And although it has fallen from the very high levels seen after the pandemic, it remains considerably above the pre-pandemic level. So perhaps Covid didn’t create EBSA. Perhaps it brought a problem that had always existed into much sharper focus.
What’s happening in the brain?
This is where neuroscience can help us understand what might be happening for an anxious child.
Imagine your brain has an alarm system. Its job is to keep you safe. When it thinks something might be dangerous, it doesn’t stop to have a long discussion about whether the danger is real. It reacts. Your heart may beat faster. Your breathing changes. Your muscles tense. Your attention becomes focused on whatever your brain thinks you need to deal with.
This is your threat response, sometimes described as fight, flight or freeze. And importantly, the brain doesn’t only respond to physical danger. It can react to the possibility of embarrassment, rejection, failure or being judged. It can react to an overwhelming classroom. It can react to the thought of walking into a school where you feel you don’t belong.
For a child experiencing EBSA, the brain may gradually learn that school equals threat. Once that association has developed, simply thinking about school can be enough to trigger the alarm. This is why your child may feel physically sick before they have even left the house.
And then something else happens. They stay at home. The anxiety starts to come down. Their brain learns something very powerful: “I felt awful when I thought about school. I stayed at home and I felt better.” The brain is designed to learn from experiences like this. So the next morning, the anxiety can become even stronger. In turn, this creates a cycle of anxiety, avoidance and temporary relief.
Understanding this doesn’t mean that we should simply force a child through the school gates. It means we can start to understand why the problem can become bigger if it isn’t addressed.
But aren’t children better off going to school?
Yes. And I think this is an important part of the conversation because sometimes, when we talk about anxiety and EBSA, we can accidentally give the impression that staying at home is the best solution. For most children, being able to attend school is an important part of their wellbeing and development.
School isn’t just about academic education. It provides opportunities to build friendships, develop independence, practise communication and learn how to manage the inevitable ups and downs of being around other people. Children learn to solve problems, negotiate disagreements, cope with disappointment and experience success. They develop confidence and build resilience, partly by discovering that they can do things that once felt difficult.
There is also something important about belonging. Having a place where you are expected, where people know your name and where you are part of a community can be incredibly valuable. And the longer a child is away from school, the more they can miss out on these experiences. They may fall behind with their work. They can become disconnected from friends. They may lose confidence in their ability to cope. And, ironically, the longer they stay away, the more frightening the idea of returning can become.
This doesn’t mean that the answer is simply, “Get them back into school at all costs.” If a child is experiencing significant anxiety, bullying, unmet special educational needs or another underlying difficulty, those things need to be understood and addressed. The goal should never be attendance at any price. Instead, the goal should be to help the child become able to attend, learn, connect and participate without being overwhelmed by anxiety.
Sometimes that means a gradual return. Sometimes it means adjustments. Sometimes it means additional professional support. And very often it means adults working together rather than everyone feeling that they are fighting against each other.
How can parents support a child with EBSA?
If your child is struggling, it can be incredibly hard. You may feel frustrated. You may feel worried about their education. You may be getting messages from school asking why they aren’t attending. You may also be trying to get through a morning that has descended into tears, arguments or panic.
Try, where possible, to step away from the question of “How do I get them through the school gates?” and start with “What is making the school gates feel so difficult?” Talk to your child when they are calm rather than in the middle of a stressful morning.
You might ask what part of school feels hardest. Is it:
- The journey?
- The classroom?
- Break time?
- The noise?
- A particular lesson?
- Friendships?
- Being away from home?
- Worrying about getting something wrong?
- Being expected to speak in front of other people?
Sometimes children can’t immediately tell us what is wrong because they don’t know themselves. They just know that school makes them feel awful.
Work with the school rather than waiting until the situation becomes a crisis. A supportive plan might involve a trusted member of staff, a quiet or safe space, adjustments to the school day, support around transitions or a carefully planned gradual return.
And remember that anxiety rarely disappears because someone tells us not to be anxious. It tends to reduce when the brain has new experiences that show us we can cope.
What are schools and the government doing?
There is now much greater recognition that school absence can have complex causes and that schools need to understand the barriers preventing children from attending. In England, the Department for Education’s statutory guidance, Working Together to Improve School Attendance, asks schools and local authorities to work with pupils and families to understand barriers to attendance and provide appropriate support. The guidance was updated in July 2026.
You may also have come across something called RISE. RISE stands for Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence. The Department for Education’s RISE attendance programme provides schools with online and in-person professional development and resources designed to help improve attendance. It forms part of the wider support available to schools rather than being a specific EBSA treatment programme. This distinction is important.
There isn’t a single government programme called “the EBSA solution”. Instead, EBSA sits within a much wider picture of attendance, mental health, special educational needs and wellbeing. And although there is now much more awareness, there is still a lot we don’t know. We need better research into what works for different children and, importantly, how schools can identify and support difficulties before absence becomes entrenched.
Where can Solution Focused Hypnotherapy fit?
This is something I think about a lot in my work. When a child is experiencing EBSA, it can be very easy for conversations to become dominated by the problem:
“I can’t go to school.”
“I’m too anxious.”
“What if something happens?”
“I hate school.”
The more attention we give those thoughts, the bigger the problem can sometimes feel. Solution Focused Hypnotherapy offers a different perspective. Rather than spending all our time looking backwards at what has gone wrong, we can begin exploring what the child wants to be different:
- What would they like to be able to do?
- How would they know things were getting better?
- What are they already managing?
- When have they coped with something difficult before?
- What would be a small sign that they were becoming more confident?
These questions can help shift attention towards possibility rather than simply focusing on the problem. The hypnotherapy element can also provide an opportunity to practise feeling calm and in control. We can use relaxation and visualisation to help the brain rehearse different responses. Perhaps imagining getting ready for school feeling calmer. Walking through the gates. Sitting in a classroom. Dealing with an uncomfortable moment and discovering that you can cope.
We’re not pretending the anxiety isn’t there. We’re helping the brain learn that anxiety doesn’t have to be in charge.
Of course, Solution Focused Hypnotherapy isn’t a replacement for appropriate support from school, your GP or other professionals when that is needed. If there is bullying, an unmet special educational need, depression, significant anxiety or another underlying difficulty, those issues need to be addressed too. But it can be one part of a wider support package, helping a young person build confidence, resilience and a greater sense of what is possible.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember
If your child is struggling to go to school, it can be tempting to think that the problem is the child. They won’t go. They refuse. They’re being difficult. They’re making excuses.
But what if we looked at it differently? What if their behaviour is telling us that something doesn’t feel manageable right now? That doesn’t mean we should accept that they can never go back to school. Quite the opposite. Children deserve the opportunity to learn, develop friendships, build independence and discover what they are capable of. They deserve the opportunities that school can provide. But sometimes they need help getting there.
So as September gets underway, if your child is finding the return to school harder than expected, try to look beyond the behaviour and listen for the message underneath it: “Something about this feels too difficult for me right now.” That gives us somewhere to start. And once we understand what the brain is trying to protect them from, we can begin helping them discover something equally important: “Maybe I can cope with this after all.”
What about the impact on parents?
Watching your child struggle with school can be incredibly stressful and can leave parents feeling anxious, helpless or constantly on alert. Helping a parent manage their own anxiety can sometimes make it easier for them to respond calmly and consistently, rather than becoming caught up in the morning battle. Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can support parents as well.
If EBSA is affecting your family, why not book a free consultation with me and find out how Solution Focused Hypnotherapy could help.