News

Having mopped up 12,000 truants in its 10-area street crime initiative since April, the government will now make parents of persistent truants face fast-track prosecutions for "refusing" to send their children to school. This measure is apparently based on the assumption that parents are always in the position, given the will, to make their children attend school.

Despite the success of the Home Office's street crime initiative, the Department for Education and Skills has become increasingly anxious about rising truancy rates in primary schools, which in many areas have outstripped those in secondary schools. New figures show that in some areas more than 40 per cent of children play truant and in one of the worst areas, Tower Hamlets in east London, 48 per cent of primary age children played truant for an average of four days in 2001-2. Fast-track prosecutions are being piloted in six local education authorities from next month. Parents will be given 12 weeks to get their children back on the rails or face parenting orders, fines of up to £2,500, or imprisonment.   

Bill Badham, development officer, National Youth Agency
"Eight-foot high steel fences, electronic registration, CCTV, imposed uniform. Am I describing a young offenders institution? No. I'm describing my son's secondary school. What next? Perhaps tagging students would crack truancy? Children and young people have a right to education and participation in school decision-making. If attendance at school was not compulsory and income depended on numbers who chose to come - as for college and university - that would shake things up."

Phil Frampton, national chairperson, Care Leavers Association
"Education secretary Estelle Morris tells pupils that school is such a dangerous place because staff are not police-checked, so pupils must stay at home. Then pupils find out that some exam boards have lowered their results. So the government comes up with the reason as to why youth are so demoralised with school that they truant - it's the parents, who must be punished. At best this will force disaffected youth back to being disaffected in school and bullied youth back to being bullied at school."

Martin Green, chief executive, Counsel and Care for the Elderly
"I welcome the move to hold parents to account when their children truant from school. There needs to be a recognition that if children do not get an education, they will have fewer life chances. The fact that this issue is involving primary school children is particularly worrying because it could set a pattern for the future. It should be the responsibility of parents to ensure their children benefit from society's investment in education."

Bob Hudson, principal research fellow, Nuffield Institute for Health, University of Leeds
"Of course, part of the trouble does lie with parenting, but what exactly is the Department for Education and Skills trying to achieve here? It is simply unrealistic to extract parental behaviour from its social context and expect punitive measures to resolve a complex social problem. Indeed, the DfES might ask whether its own fixation with standards and the creation of a two-tier educational system might not be contributory factors. Since health secretary Alan Milburn nailed down the coffin on the Seebohm report last week, it is worth revisiting chapter 8 to find a more sensible approach rooted in the total environment of the child."

Felicity Collier, chief executive, Baaf Adoption and Fostering
"This is all about labelling parents who either cannot cope or do not value education, perhaps because of their own poor experiences. If punishment worked, prison would be a much more effective deterrent on offending behaviour than it actually is. Couldn't the government introduce incentives? I have a granddaughter in an inner city first school and they are congratulated in assembly for good attendance, and parents are invited to watch the little ceremony. Parents need to feel good about what their children do and be nurtured and to feel part of the school."