When the System Doesn't Fit: Why Some Children Can't Do School, and What We Can Do Instead

Some children can't do school because the structure itself is inaccessible to them, not because they lack effort or ability. When a child can't use the route we've built, we keep examining the child instead of the route.

I had a dream recently where I was trying to get down a staircase. Everyone else seemed to be able to use it normally, but when I reached it, the steps were narrow, misshapen and almost impossible to get onto. I eventually had to climb down the structure like I was climbing a tree.

I kept thinking about that staircase afterwards.

If a child can't use a staircase, I wouldn't conclude that they need to get better at stairs. I'd look at the staircase.

And yet, when a child can't attend school, that's often not where we look first.

Why do we assume school works for every child?

We assume it because most children can use it. That is a reasonable thing to notice and an unreasonable thing to conclude from.

School has a particular architecture. Arrive at a set time. Stay in one environment. Tolerate noise and crowds. Move between activities on command. Learn on a timetable. Show what you know in prescribed ways. Accept adult authority. Repeat, five days a week.

For many children that structure is workable. That doesn't make it universally accessible.

What happens when a child can't get down the stairs?

We examine the child. Why won't they attend? Why aren't they engaging? How do we raise attendance? What will make them tolerate the classroom?

Each of those questions starts from the same place: the staircase is fine, so the child must be the problem.

I'm not describing bad people. Teachers know a lot about thirty children, and they work inside rules they didn't write. The assumption sits in the system, and it shapes every question that gets asked.

Why don't accommodations always fix it?

Accommodations ask the child to keep using the same staircase. A reduced timetable, a movement break, a quiet room or a uniform adjustment can genuinely help a child who is close to coping.

But some accommodations modify the existing route without asking whether it is the right route for this child. A slightly wider step doesn't help if the staircase itself is inaccessible.

"We've tried everything" can mean "we've tried everything on this staircase".

What do children do when the system doesn't fit?

Some invent extraordinary ways of getting through an unsuitable system. Masking all day and collapsing at home. Missing one particular lesson. Hiding in bathrooms. Somatic symptoms like stomach aches and headaches. Refusing in the morning. Attending intermittently.

From outside, these look like the problem. Read another way, they are attempts to use an environment the child can't sustainably access.

That is a general pattern, not a diagnosis. If any of it sounds familiar, your GP or your child's mental health service (CAMHS in Ireland and the UK) can help you work out what is going on for your child. Autistic burnout and school refusal covers one common route into this.

What is it like to be watched while you struggle?

Other children appear to walk down the stairs without thinking. One child is clinging to the outside of the staircase, working out where to put each hand and foot.

Then the adults ask why they're making such a fuss.

I know a small version of this. In third class, during an Irish lesson, the teacher sent me out to put on my unusual woolly coat. She then used me to demonstrate "I'm wearing my coat" while the class laughed. I have very little Irish today.

The difficulty is one thing. The child also experiences being visibly different while struggling with something everyone else seems to do effortlessly. That second part lands on its own.

Does a child getting through school mean it was accessible?

No. A child may reach the bottom. They may get good grades, excellent attendance and appear compliant.

That tells us they got there. It doesn't tell us what it cost them.

A child who masks all day and falls apart at 4pm has a perfect record at school and a very different record at home. The first one is on the report. The second is where the cost shows up.

What question should we ask instead?

Instead of "How do we get this child down these stairs?", ask where this child is trying to go, and whether there is another way to get there.

The destination is education, not necessarily school. Those have been treated as one thing for so long that separating them feels radical, but the law in many places already draws the line. In Ireland, for example, the constitutional bar is "a certain minimum education". It doesn't say school.

Learning happens through conversations, games, interests, research, making things, drawing, coding, reading, travel, documentaries, projects, online communities, tutors and ordinary life. Interest-led learning shows what that looks like day to day.

Does a different route mean a lesser destination?

No. A child who climbs down differently isn't incapable of reaching the bottom. A child who can't take part in conventional schooling isn't incapable of learning.

Those are two separate questions. Education systems sometimes treat them as one.

When they are treated as one, a child who can't do school gets labelled as a child who can't learn. That label is wrong, and it sticks.

What would being curious about the staircase look like?

When a child repeatedly can't take part, "What's wrong?" is one question. It doesn't have to be the only one.

Others are available:

• What is this environment requiring of this child?
• Which part of it is becoming inaccessible: the noise, the transitions, the unpredictability, the sitting still, the social load?
• What happens when that demand is removed?
• Where does learning show up on its own?
• What route can this child use?

That moves the conversation from compliance towards investigation. It is also the point where starting home education after school burnout becomes a real option, rather than a last resort.

Where does E Squared fit?

E Squared isn't about proving that a child who can't attend school is secretly doing school at home. It exists to make learning that doesn't look like school visible.

A child may never have completed a worksheet on percentages. They may have spent an afternoon working out prices and profit for something they want to sell. The learning is real, even though it didn't arrive by the conventional staircase.

I log moments like that in plain words, and the app matches them to the curriculum's key skills. It lets a parent show a home education assessor what happened without turning home into school. How to record learning when your child won't do worksheets is the starting point if you want to try it by hand.

It is in development, and you can join the early list at esquared.app.

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Maybe some children don't need more encouragement to climb an impossible staircase.

Maybe they need us to stop staring at the way they're climbing and help them find another route.