Event Details
🗓️ Date: Tuesday, 9 September 2025
⏰ Time: 17:30- 18:15 GMT
💻 Format: Online
Supporting Pupils with ‘Emotional Based School Avoidance’ or ‘Emotional Barriers to School Attendance’ (EBSA)
Join Highgrove Online School for an important webinar all about supporting pupils with EBSA. EBSA is a term used when a child struggles to attend school due to overwhelming emotional distress. Unlike truancy, EBSA comes from feelings of anxiety, social fear or sensory overwhelm, and is often rooted in experiences like bullying, academic pressure, and discomfort felt in the physical environment of a school.
EBSA is an acronym for Emotional Based School Avoidance, or the alternative term Emotional Barriers to School Attendance, which switches the responsibility from the child who is struggling with the school environment to the environment of the school itself. Regardless of the terminology used, it is important not to ignore or downplay the emotional distress of EBSA and to make sure the child feels that it is taken seriously by the adults around them.
This webinar will look at how best to support pupils with EBSA, including considering what options there are when the barriers to school attendance are intrinsic to the school environment itself.
