PDA and emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA)

Emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA) happens when children or young people feel extreme anxiety about going to school.

Whilst EBSA is the most well-known term for describing this, ‘school distress’ better captures the extreme emotional turmoil some children face in the classroom. There can be many reasons for distress, but here are some examples:

Not receiving the right support at school.
Struggling with mental health.
Having unmet sensory processing needs.
Experiencing isolation or social exclusion.
Struggling with loss of control or demands.

PDA and school distress – what’s the connection?

School distress is common among autistic children, especially those with a PDA profile. Our Being Misunderstood in Education report found that 70% of PDAers either weren’t in school or struggled to attend regularly.

A defining (but not the only) feature of PDA is a strong need to avoid everyday demands. But schools are full of rules and expectations, making them particularly challenging. To thrive, PDAers need flexibility, equality, collaboration, and choice—things that most schools aren’t naturally designed to provide. These mismatches can make school really difficult.

Another key challenge is that many schools don’t fully understand PDA or may not recognise it as a valid profile. PDAers can struggle to ask for help, making it even harder. Also, getting the right support can be a slow process. Schools and local authorities often take a ‘wait and see’ approach, delaying help until a child’s distress becomes too much. This can lead to school avoidance or even burnout.

Autistic burnout and school distress

Autistic burnout refers to an intense, long-lasting state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that arises from chronic stress and the ongoing effort to meet everyday demands in a largely non-autistic world.

It can involve a temporary loss of skills, heightened sensitivities, and profound fatigue. A 2020 paper in Autism in Adulthood characterises it as: “Having all of your internal resources exhausted beyond measure and being left with no clean-up crew.” Raymaker, D. M., Teo, A. R., Steckler, N. A., Lentz, B., Scharer, M., et al. (2020). If your child is experiencing school distress, they might also be more likely to reach burnout, so it’s important to identify the root causes of stress and to ask for help.

How should schools respond?

School distress should never be treated as truancy or marked as ‘unauthorised absence,’ and parents/carers should not be penalised for non-attendance.

When a child isn’t in school due to unmet social, educational or health needs, it is the school and local authority’s responsibility to identify those needs and provide support—this may include an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP) to ensure the right help is in place.

It’s the duty of the local authority to provide a suitable alternative education – in the case of school refusal due to health reasons, this should begin 15 days following the period when school refusal began. You can learn more about this over at IPSEA.

What can I do to help my child?

Every child’s situation is unique, and progress may take time, particularly if your child is experiencing burnout. Prioritising your child’s well-being is what truly matters. Here are some helpful approaches you could try:

Talking to your GP about mental health: you could request a doctor’s note to share with school and ask for a referral to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). If you’re able to, you could explore private options (NHS waiting lists can be long).
Staying in touch with school: keeping everyone up to date is a good idea. You might find keeping a diary of communications helpful to look back on. It’s worth double checking to see how school is recording any absences and question if you need to.
Identifying underlying challenges: try to work out what factors are causing distress. For example, you might want to initiate an OT assessment or ask school about local services to seek advice from. Creating space when your child feels relaxed, to talk things through together, can also be helpful.

Sharing information and asking for adjustments: you could ask teachers and support staff for changes which are within their control. Or you might want to speak to the school’s SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator) about wider support needs or adjustments that might require senior decision making (for example uniform policies or extra resources).
Apply for an Education, Health, and Care (EHC) assessment: if you think your child needs more support than what can be provided to all learners through ‘Universal provision’, then you could ask school to apply for an EHC assessment to identify needs. If the school say they won’t do this, you can apply yourself, see this section for more information
Ease back into school (only when appropriate): if your child is ready and school has put the right supports in place, consider short visits during quiet times or visiting during activities they enjoy. You could ask school for a part time timetable to begin with and let your child stay in control of the process.

Further support and resources

You can find further help with how to apply for an EHCP by visiting this section of our site. (INSERT LINK WHEN WE HAVE IT)

To find out more about PDAers’ experiences of school you can read our report: Being Misunderstood in Education report. (INSERT LINK TO NEW SIE WHEN WE HAVE IT)

For further discussion about understanding EBSA and the barriers to education you can listen to this recorded Q&A, over on our hub: https://www.pdasociety.org.uk/understanding-emotionally-based-school-avoidance-qa/. (LINK TO NEW SITE WHEN WE HAVE IT)

You can get deeper knowledge from our live training courses. Visit (INSERT LINK) to find out what events we have coming up.

If you’ve found our resources helpful, please consider helping us to support other families, by getting involved in our fundraising. (INSERT LINK)

Pull quotes

*All names are changes to protect our community.

“I’d spend hours weighing up my daughter’s distress against what would happen if she didn’t get an education. I’d sit on the school steps, as teachers tried to peel her off me. Then I realised, she wasn’t learning anything other than trauma, things had to change.”

Sarah*

“School wasn’t easy for me. I preferred to go off into my fantasy world. I also felt that I didn’t fit in, and I often challenged my teachers. I was often told that I was lazy, stubborn etc.”

Jack*