There has always been a drive in education on attendance, and rightly so. The link between attendance and academic achievement is clear – you have to be present in order to take instruction and learn effectively. However, when we look at a student who is struggling to attend school or enter a classroom, our immediate educational instincts can sometimes fail us. Historically, the system has used labels like ‘truancy,’ ‘refusal,’ or ‘oppositional defiance’. But working with neurodivergent young people teaches us something vital: school avoidance is not necessarily an act of defiance; it can be a visible signal of a nervous system in survival mode. I hold this firmly in mind, thanks to the examples I have seen in real students suffering to make it into school.
At Abingdon House School, Purley, we support cognitively able students with a range of special educational needs, including autism, ADHD, speech and language needs, and specific learning differences like dyslexia and dyspraxia. Many of our students arrive having had deeply painful or disrupted experiences in mainstream environments.
To support these young people, we must dismantle the misconceptions surrounding classroom and school avoidance. We must look closely at how neurodivergence, sensory processing, and demand avoidance can converge to create intense school-based distress and Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA).
Avoidance: the causes and what it looks like
There is no single ‘cause’ or ‘trigger’ for demand avoidance, also known as Pathological Demand Avoidance. Researchers and education professionals often attribute PDA to a combination of several factors, which will vary from child to child. For example, sensory processing differences, dysregulation and anxiety can all contribute to a student’s experience of PDA, and while PDA itself is not caused by trauma, individuals who have experienced trauma may have heightened distress around demands. In addition, a student’s lived experience of demands and consequences in various settings – whether at school, nursery, at home or elsewhere – can also play a part in PDA.
School avoidance does not always look like a student refusing to get out of bed or crying at the school gates. In the classroom, the early signs of distress are often subtle and easily misinterpreted.
Daydreaming, hyper-focusing on drawing, or retreating into a ‘fantasy world’ may be read as an overactive imagination, but in practice may be caused by dissociation – a coping mechanism to mentally escape an overwhelming sensory or emotional environment. Some may read a student’s frequent complaints of morning stomach aches, headaches, nausea, or sleep disturbances as a dramatisation, but this be signalling physiological stress – the body’s physical response to chronic, severe anticipation of anxiety. Sudden emotional outbursts and running out of the classroom may be labelled as ‘disruptive’ or ‘attention-seeking,’ but this could in fact be the result of an overwhelmed nervous system, where the student is in ‘fight, flight or freeze’ mode.
The crucial link: Demand avoidance, PDA, and EBSA
To truly understand students struggling to attend school, we must address the concept of demand avoidance.
All of us avoid demands sometimes, and there are many reasons a person may experience this avoidance. However, children with a Pathological Demand Avoidance profile – which is increasingly understood as a profile on the autism spectrum – experience an intense, neurodevelopmental need to avoid some everyday expectations. For a PDA learner, a basic ask (like ‘open your book’ or ‘put your coat on’) is not perceived as a simple request. It is processed by their nervous system as an existential threat to their autonomy, triggering an immediate fight, flight, or freeze response.
Schools are, by their very nature, built on compliance, rules, and constant direct demands. For a PDA student, navigating this environment is like trying to walk through a minefield of anxiety triggers.
A landmark report by the PDA Society revealed that a staggering 70% of the 686 PDA learners surveyed were either not in school or struggled to attend regularly. This is not a failure of parenting or a child choosing to be difficult, it is a systemic mismatch. When the demands of the school environment consistently outweigh a student’s internal resources to cope, the brain protects itself the only way it knows how: by avoiding the environment entirely.
This is where EBSA comes in. While PDA helps to describe the profile of the student and their nervous system’s response to demands, EBSA describes the actual experience of school distress and avoidance.
Re-envisaging the path forward
At Abingdon House School, Purley, we believe that reversing school avoidance requires a fundamental pivot in how we design education. We cannot simply expect the student to change their nervous system to fit the school; we must adapt the school to fit the student.
To support students experiencing EBSA and demand avoidance, we must shift our approach:
- Prioritise connection over compliance: A child will only learn when they feel safe. Building trusted, non-judgmental relationships with key adults is the single most effective protective factor against EBSA.
- Bespoke, gradual reintegration: Attendance cannot be an all-or-nothing goal. Re-engagement should be collaborative, starting with low-pressure, interest-led visits during quiet times of the school day.
- Collaborative and indirect language: For learners with a PDA profile, shifting from direct imperatives (‘You must do this’) to collaborative, indirect phrasing (‘I wonder how we could tackle this…’ or ‘Would you prefer to do this on paper or on the iPad?’) can significantly change their experience of interactions.
- A holistic, therapy-integrated environment: True inclusion means having speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, and pastoral teams working dynamically alongside classroom teachers. Adjusting sensory environments, permitting sensory breaks, and removing the shame around emotional overwhelm are essential accommodations for all neurodiverse students, but particularly those who experience PDA.
Our goal as educators must expand beyond simply getting a child to sit at a desk. We must strive to build schools where neurodivergent young people feel safe, understood, and valued for exactly who they are. When safety is established, meaningful learning can begin.
About the author
Jonathan Mansell
Headteacher at Abingdon House School, Purley
Jonathan Mansell is Headteacher of Abingdon House School, Purley, a specialist independent school supporting children and young people with autism, ADHD, speech, language and communication needs, and associated learning differences.
Jon has worked across both mainstream and specialist education throughout his career, giving him extensive experience supporting pupils whose needs can make school attendance and engagement challenging. Before joining Abingdon House, he spent six years as Deputy Headteacher at Moor House School & College, a nationally recognised specialist school for pupils with Developmental Language Disorder and previously held a range of senior pastoral and academic leadership roles within a large South London Multi Academy Trust.
A Science specialist by background, Jon has also led PSHE and wellbeing initiatives designed to strengthen relationships, build resilience and improve outcomes for vulnerable learners. He is passionate about creating inclusive, therapeutic learning environments that enable children experiencing barriers to education, including Emotional Based School Avoidance (EBSA), to rebuild confidence, reconnect with learning and achieve long-term success.
He holds a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Reading, a PGCE from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a Master’s degree in Leadership, Change and Management from UCL’s Institute of Education.
