(An item from the ISHN Member information service)  The news stories we identified this week included a story about an American forum organized by the White House to "rethink school discipline". The news release stated "The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice are hosting teams of superintendents, principals, and teachers from across the country today for "Rethink Discipline," a day-long conference at the White House on creating positive school climates and implementing effective discipline practices. The conference seeks to advance the national conversation about reducing the overuse of unnecessary out of school suspensions and expulsions and replacing these practices with positive alternatives that keep students in school and engaged in learning, but also ensure accountability." According to data released at the Forum , the number of US students losing critical learning time due to out of school suspensions and expulsions is staggering. Over 3 million students are suspended or expelled every year. A number of excellent actions were also announced, including policy, planning and profession al guides, a clearinghouse/web site and a public awareness campaign. The initiative was also linked to other US initiatives on racism, gender equity and similar policy directions. The search for meaningful alternatives to suspension are real and laudable. But do these various actions address the core dilemma for teachers; namely, if one or a few students continually disrupt the order and learning of other students, or if they break defined rules in a significant manner, what is the disciplinary pathway to follow. Particularly if the pathway is made more difficult and complicated by various administrative needs, family and neighbourhood factors and more? Read more>>

(From UCLA School Mental Health Project) A new book in January 2015 by the UCLA School Mental Health Project makes a cogent argument for transforming the fragmented delivery of various support services so that they truly support student learning and equitable educational opportunity. The authors begin with this " external and internal barriers to learning and teaching have continued to pose some of the most pervasive and entrenched challenges to educators across the country, particularly in chronically low performing schools. Failure to directly address these barriers ensures that (a) too many children and youth will continue to struggle in school, and (b) teachers will continue to divert precious instructional time to dealing with behavior and other problems...Transforming student and learning supports is key to school improvement. To this end, this book incorporates years of research and prototype development and a variety of examples from trailblazing efforts"  They go on to say "Mapping a school district’s existing efforts to address problems yields a consistent picture of many practices and fragmented, piecemeal, and usually disorganized activity (as illustrated below). The range of such learning and student supports generally is extensive and expensive".  They also go on to describe the cause and this is where we might disagree: "Underlying the fragmentation is a fundamental policy problem, namely the long-standing marginalization of student and learning supports in school improvement policy and practice. Thus, most efforts to directly use student and learning supports to address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students are not a primary focus in school improvement planning. " In our view, a major cause of the fragmentation is that the mandates and funding of the various health, social and other services is done in a sporadic, competitive and disjointed manner. Part of the transformation will require that health and other ministries re-organize their work so that they are accountable for providing consistent support for students most at risk, rather than always worrying about the optimal health of all students in universal programs. There have often been attempts to insert health outputs and outcomes into school system accountability. In our view, this should be a two-way street, with health and other systems being accountable for a reasonable number of educational outputs, particularly for more vulnerable students. Read more>>

(From the ISHN Member information service) In our discussions within our Wikipedia style web site (www.schools-for-all.org), a project funded by Health Canada sought to clarify the concept of resilience. Often this concept has become inflated to become the equivalent to health promotion or prevention rather than intrinsic or acquired individual coping skills or changes to policies, programs or procedures that deliver more support to students when they are experiencing a major challenge. An article in Issue #2, 2014 of the Journal of Educational Research helps us add to that clarity in a practical discussion of resilience and school dropouts. "   The authors focused on high school students who were at risk of dropping out and examined why some of these students persevered and graduated while others ended up dropping out of school. Sixty resilient students and 80 dropouts participated in the study. Their results indicate that although learning difficulties were shared by participants, 4 types of abilities set the resilient students apart from dropouts: (a) inreach (using their own resources); (b) outreach (asking for help when needed); (c) establishing and maintaining positive relationships with teachers and friends while setting limits when necessary; and (d) planning, making choices and following through on decisions. It was also found that resilient students could count on lifelines, people they knew they could always rely on when they had difficulties.". In our view, it this type of internal and external combination of resources that encourage resilience. Read more>>

(From the ISHN Member information service)  A recent article describing a growing trend in the United states to voluntarily delay entry into high school in order to strengthen students academically and socially reflects increased attention to various transition periods in a child's schooling. A report on grade retention done by UNESCO is primarily focused on involuntary cases but does include some students who have volunteered to wait a year. That UNESCO report concludes that    “Grade repetition represents inefficiency and wastage of resources for society, but its voluntary forms may be beneficial to students in certain circumstances,”. In Ireland, a voluntary "transition" year has become so popular that the vast majority of students now make the choice to wait a year before proceeding. See our previous blof post on the Irish program here. In both of these cases and others, it may very well come down to the supports that are available to students as they make the transition. this is where effective, comprehensive health and social programs that are linked effectively within the school systems can be of the greatest service. Read more from the American news story.    

(From the UCLA School Mental Health Center) One of the themes being developed in our discussions is how to integrate health and social programs within education systems. A recent report from the US-based Child Trends organization has described how an integrated set of student services is how the health, social services, mental health and other sectors can and should contribute to student success. If these various services can cooperate and deliver such support in a concerted manner, it would assure educators of their ongoing commitment to working with and within schools. A summary of the Child Trend report and the full research review are available from Child trends. These documents define ISS “representing an emerging field of practice that aims to address persistent disparities in educational achievement and attainment. ISS is a school-based approach to promoting students’ academic achievement and educational attainment by coordinating a seamless system of wraparound supports for the child, the family, and schools, to target student’s academic and non-academic barriers to learning." That report focuses on nine programs:Beacon Initiative, Children’s Aid Society Community Schools, City Connects, Comer School Development Program, Communities In Schools, CoZi Initiative, Say Yes to Education, School of the 21st Century and University‑Assisted Community Schools.. However, the UCLA Center on School Mental Health, a long-time advocate for comprehensive approaches to removing barriers to learning, strongly suggests that integrated student supports (ISS) alone "do not effectively address the fundamental policy and practice concerns about the consequences of pursuing the limited approach that the concept of integrated student supports engenders with respect to enhancing equity of opportunity for students to succeed at school and beyond". The UCLA analysis suggests that "the Child Trends report "doesn’t consider the implications of the fact that in most schools student support is primarily provided by school and district-based student support personnel (e.g., school psychologists, school counselors, school social workers, school nurses, school dropout/graduation support, special educators, and many more school personnel who play a role in prevention, early intervention, and treatment of students with severe and chronic problems. The UCLA "emphasis continues to be on moving toward policy and practice for addressing a wide range barriers to student development and learning and to teachers teaching. Making this a reality involves much more than integrating already over-committed community services into schools. It requires transforming the role schools play and weaving together the broadest range of school and community resources for enhancing student and learning supports. In other words, the support services that must be provided by other agencies, which are vital as a long term commitment from those sectors, must be fully integrated within the goals and priorities of the school systems. Further, school systems must be committed to ensuring that all children are well-served by their schooling.

(From the ISHN member news/research service) Researchers are increasingly focused on repeated and prolonged student absences as a primary cause for student academic difficulties. A recent report in the US indicates that student health and safety problems are often causes of these absences. By concentrating our health and social programs on students who are missing school, we can ensure that these programs are better integrated with the priority concerns of education systems. The US report notes that "Chronic absence is a national crisis, dragging downachievement for students across the country. An estimated 5 million to 7.5 million students in the United States are missing so much school that they are academically at risk.In some communities and schools, more than one out of four children are chronically absent.Most school systems report on overall attendance and miss the fact that much of the absences are actually affecting a minority of students who mss classes often. In Utah, a 2012 statewide analysis showed that 13.5percent of all students were chronically absent and that those chronically absent in any year between 8th and 12th grades were 7.4 times more likely to drop out of high school".The US report explains that "Many students cannot get to school because of chronic health conditions; inadequate access to medical, mental health or dental care; unstable or poor-quality unhealthy housing; unreliable transportation; or a lack of effective family and community supports and service delivery. This is especially true for children living in poverty or involved in the foster care or juvenile justice systems. An analysis by the University of Utah found that students who were homeless were 2.5 times more likely to be chronically absent. In addition, environmental conditions, such as mold and lead poisoning, can make children more susceptible to absenteeism. Sometimes poor attendance occurs when students are avoiding going to school because of bullying, academic difficulty, dangerous routes to and from school, an unhealthy school climate, punitive disciplinary practices or the lack of effective instruction. Teacher absenteeism can prompt some children to avoid school. Analyzing chronic absence data by classroom can help reveal if the problem is school-wide or concentrated in particular classrooms. In some cases, it is not the student alone who is demonstrating aversion. Poor attendance could be a reflection of a parent’s negative experiences with school and their lack of confidence that their child’s experience will be different. The US reports calls for an inter-agency response to the problem of prolonged or repeated absences for some students. This is a great opportunity for health, safety & social development programs to be more relevant to educators in achieving their core objectives.  Read More>>

(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in the May 2013 issue of MBC Public Health may suggest that school health promotion efforts be more focused on students in vocational courses and alternative schools. This study aimed at investigating hazardous drinking, tobacco smoking and physical inactivity as well as their associations and demographic predictors in vocational school students.Out of 57 contacted vocational schools in Switzerland, a total of 24 schools participated in a survey assessing gender, age, immigrant background, educational attainment and vocational field as well as the their smoking, drinking and other behaviours. The authors report that "Of the surveyed students, 79.4% showed at least one risk factor, 43.6% showed two or more and 9.6% showed all three health risk factors. Hazardous drinking was more prevalent in male, physical inactivity was more prevalent in female vocational school students. The proportion of students with low physical activity and tobacco smoking increased with increasing age. While the combination of hazardous drinking and tobacco smoking was higher in males, the other risk factor combinations were observed particularly among females. Read more>>

As part of the UNICEF and UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children, Romania has published its country report. The report notes that "most of the children out of school in Romania had a prior experience of attending school. This situation is indicated by the rather high enrolment rates in pre-primary and primary level and also by the drop-out rates registered in primary and lower secondary levels.Therefore, the focus of our study is mainly ondropouts and non-attendance, rather than children who have never gone to school".