News

For a government dedicated to improving educational standards, tackling social exclusion and reducing crime, cutting truancy - with its links to all three - must seem the answer to many problems.

Estimates suggest that as many as 50,000 children every day miss school without good reason, and the consequences for their educational achievements can be dire. Just 10 per cent of persistent truants reach the government's benchmark of five A-C grade GCSE passes. This compares badly with children who have been permanently excluded from school, 17 per cent of whom reach the standard.

Experts agree that poor educational achievement is both a consequence and a cause of social exclusion. Add to this a recent survey by the Youth Justice Board,¹ which found that two-thirds of regular truants and excluded pupils admitted committing crime. Official figures² suggest that 40 per cent of street crime, 20 per cent of criminal damage, 25 per cent of burglaries and 30 per cent of car thefts are committed by under-16s who should be in school.

These connections may give some clue as to why truancy has risen so far up the political agenda, and there has been no shortage of government initiatives (see below), some of which have been controversial. Last spring's suggestion that parents of truants would lose child benefit was widely opposed and was dropped late last year, but two mothers have already spent time in prison as a result of the government's hard line. One, Patricia Amos, gave then education secretary Estelle Morris something to crow about when she said that prison had made her see the error of her ways.

But there is widespread scepticism about the government's stance on truancy among education social workers and psychologists. Brian Harrison-Jennings, general secretary of the Association of Educational Psychologists, says a vital part of the jigsaw is being ignored. "There's a lot of fuss being made about home school contracts, which tell children that they will go to school, and they will listen to the teacher, and they will be nice to the dinner ladies. Those contracts aren't worth the paper they are written on - enforced co-operation is a contradiction in terms.

"The government isn't addressing the underlying reasons children don't want to be in school. I don't doubt there are a few parents who are so desperately lonely and inadequate that they like having their children around during the day. But it is generally the children who are voting with their feet, and often for perfectly rational reasons. Some are bullied physically or psychologically by peers or by teachers. Others find school demoralising and humiliating because they aren't academic and are constantly tested and found wanting."

Harrison-Jennings suggests that a key part of the apparent rise in the problem of truancy has been driven by the "performance culture" in schools inspired by the Conservatives and sustained by Labour. Constant testing and evaluation means that children who are not academically gifted or who are lagging behind end up demoralised and stigmatised. And with the importance now attached to league tables, schools can ill afford to spend time re-engaging disaffected pupils and, in many cases, would rather they weren't there.

Truancy expert Ken Reid says "the use of the justice system to tackle truancy hasn't been very successful" and that the government should revisit its performance culture and the national curriculum.

"Children get into a cycle of academic failure, they fail at all the stages, yet they still go forward to the next one. And when they start truanting, we find them and send them back to exactly the same regime. The truth is that the national curriculum is geared towards academic achievement. But a lot of children are not interested in modern languages, science or engineering. They need a more general, vocational curriculum, particularly between 14 and 19."

In a speech at the end of December, education secretary Charles Clarke outlined the government's measures to tackle the dual malaise of bad behaviour and truancy. He said the government wanted to "strike the right balance between supporting the 'can'ts' - families in real difficulty - and putting pressure on the 'won'ts'". But while Clarke covered topics from parenting orders to jail sentences, the question of why so many children don't want to be at school was notable by its absence.


¹ Youth Justice Board, Youth Study, 2002 www.youth-justice-board.gov.uk/policy/youth_survey_2002.pdf

² Social Exclusion Unit, Truancy and School Exclusion, 1998,
www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk/publications/reports/html/school_exclu/trintro.htm  


Absent without leave

• Every day, 50,000 pupils miss school without permission and an estimated 7.5 million school days are missed each year through truancy.
• 35 per cent of persistent truants now begin their truanting "career" in primary school.
• Rates of truancy double as pupils reach years 10 and 11 when they are studying for their GCSEs.
• Surveys suggest that "fear of school" and "boredom" are now significant causes of truancy.
• A Department for Education and Skills truancy sweep involving 900 teams stopped 12,000 children last May.
• About half of the children stopped were with their parents - 83 per cent of primary school age children stopped were with their parents and 26 per cent of secondary school age children. Of these children, about half were judged to have no good reason for being out of school.
• 60 per cent of children stopped were male, and 40 per cent female. However this distribution varied considerably across the country. For example 86 per cent of pupils stopped in Tower Hamlets were male and 71 per cent stopped in Blackpool were female.
• Just over 18 per cent of children stopped were asked to return with the education welfare officers either to their school or another central location.
• Just over 1 per cent of children were stopped more than once.

Action plan for England

• Investing £50m (in the form of behaviour improvement projects) in the 34 local education authorities with the highest levels of street crime and truancy. Behaviour and education support teams are being set up in almost all of these areas and extended to more than 200 areas in three years' time. 
• Nine LEAs acting as pathfinders for fast-track truancy prosecution. More will follow. Parents who have condoned or ignored truancy will be given 12 weeks to achieve sustained improvement in their child's attendance. A court date will be set for the end of that period, and there will be a hearing unless truancy improves. Parents face fines of up to £2,500 or imprisonment.  
• Truancy sweeps are taking place in all but the three smallest LEAs. 
• Parenting contracts: parents sign a contract agreeing to attend parenting classes and to achieve a sustained improvement in their child's attendance within a specified period. If a parent refuses to sign or breaks the contract, they will be prosecuted or, under proposed new legislation as part of the forthcoming Antisocial Behaviour Bill, receive a fixed penalty notice - the rates of which have yet to be set but may be around £50. Police, head teachers and educational welfare officers will all be given powers to issue fixed penalty notices. 
• Police officers are to patrol around schools worst affected by truancy, antisocial behaviour and crime. Patrols are to be extended this year. 
• The government believes close relationships between educational welfare officers and head teachers have been successful in tackling truancy, and is consulting on the feasibility of basing educational welfare officers in individual schools, employed by and reporting to the head rather than to the local education authority.