Councils Buy Thousands of £3,500 Robots Which ‘Represent’ Anxious Schoolchildren in Classrooms so They Can Join Lessons From Home

Kids too anxious to go to school can now send a £3,500 robot instead, letting them sit in on lessons from home. The Mail has the story:

The AV1 robot has a camera, microphone and speaker enabling a child at home to see, hear and speak to classmates via an app.

More than 2,000 are being used nationwide, many by children with “emotionally based school avoidance”, or EBSA – a chronic refusal to go to school driven by anxiety.

Teachers place the robot on the child’s usual desk and ask them questions as though they were there, while the pupil at home can simply reply, as well as swipe their screen to turn the robot’s head through 360 degrees.

A ‘whisper mode’ lets the absent pupil speak quietly to a classmate sitting beside the robot, rather than letting the whole room hear.

The camera is one-way, so the pupil at home can see and hear the lesson without being seen.

The robot was developed by Norwegian firm No Isolation, initially to keep children in hospital connected to their classrooms.

Last year Devon County Council bought 16 robots for pupils who struggle to attend because of “worry, anxiety and overwhelm”.

The authority is one of at least 80 to have taken the AV1 since the Department for Education commissioned it in 2019. The robots are used for EBSA pupils in areas including Somerset, Dorset and Haringey and Islington in London, according to council documents seen by the Mail on Sunday. …

The number of severely absent pupils with additional “social, emotional and mental health” needs has more than tripled in six years, from 8,453 to 27,442. A record 151,000 pupils missed at least half their schooling last year, from a pre-pandemic low of 60,247.

Worth reading in full.