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Rates of absenteeism and truancy have historically been much higher in Wales than in most other parts of the UK. The position now is little different. In 2000-1, official statistics indicate that pupils missed 10.4 per cent of school sessions in Wales; of these, unauthorised absence accounted for 1.6 per cent. Unauthorised absence rates were disproportionately high in Cardiff (3.8 per cent), Pembrokeshire (2.5 per cent), Swansea (2.5 per cent), Rhondda Cynon Taf (2 per cent) and Caerphilly (2 per cent).

As a consequence, the Welsh assembly established an attendance task group, made up of professionals and practitioners from a variety of interested services, for advice. This group presented its report to education and lifelong learning minister Jane Davidson in December 2002.

The group sub-divided its findings into two parts, short- and long-term recommendations (see panels, below). It is to the minister's credit that she recognised that longer-term planning is as important as short-term "fixes".

However, to achieve significant progress on attendance issues, there will need to be careful scrutiny of the role and extent of the education welfare service. This service suffered severe cuts in numbers and resources in the 1980s and early 1990s. In some local education authorities, the number of educational welfare officers (EWOs) is far too low for the complex tasks they fulfil, especially given the range and diversity of their work and extent of the new legislation.

The allocation of staff and resources to the EWO service by the education authorities is, at best, patchy and, in some, disproportionate to the tasks to be undertaken. It is unfortunate that, at the time a renewed effort is being made to improve attendance rates in schools, some LEAs are overstretched as they struggle to manage the diffuse nature and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary issues involved.

Quite separately, the Welsh assembly is undertaking a timely review of the 14-19 curriculum. It is becoming apparent that there is an urgent need for an alternative vocational curriculum to run alongside the more academic national curriculum if pupil disaffection is to be combated and pupils' overall attendance rates increased.

The link between disaffected pupils and school attendance is so obvious that it is to be hoped that the final report on the 14-19 curriculum will feature attendance issues as a critical section in its own right. At the same time, as more than one in three cases of truancy begins at the primary stage, some more projects on early intervention and transition will be necessary.


Ken Reid is an expert on truancy, deputy principal of Swansea Institute of Higher Education and the author of Truancy - Short and Long Term Solutions.

Short-term answers

• Simplify the guidance on clarifying why pupils are absent. 
• Establish how many primary schools have readily available figures on attendance rates. 
• Audit the methods of passing information between primary and secondary schools on individual pupil's attendance. 
• Evaluate local education authorities' spending on attendance issues. 
• Audit schools' and LEAs' attendance policies, how up-to-date these are and how well they link together. 
• Consider the approaches to be used in pursuing legal action on parental-condoned cases. 
• Perform truancy sweeps on a regular basis in each LEA.

Long-term answers

• Review the extent of electronic registration schemes and develop a strategy for extending their use. 
• Review the funding, role and responsibilities of the education welfare service. 
• Clarify and simplify the funding streams used to tackle truancy. 
• Establish systems to share good and innovative practice. 
• Do a pilot study on reducing absence in two schools to assess the extent to which this is possible, thereby informing future funding. 
• Increase the level of intervention at primary school level. 
• Develop a framework for multi-agency working, including training elements. 
• Review the process for taking attendance cases through the courts.