News

"Truancy can be good for you,"read a recent headline in The Guardian. Jenni Russell argued that truancy is excusable if it permits family holidays; museum visits and, access to, "new and exciting experiences". For those who have, she omitted to add.

Russell's piece was in response to the government's absurd announcement that taking a child out of school without permission is liable to a fine of £100. The well off will simply add that to the holiday budget along with the airport tax. In the same week, in Essex, 13 parents were brought to a new, "fast-track" truancy court. The result was a shambles with the hearings of all the cases postponed.


One parent, Tracy Hornsby, claimed that she had removed her daughter Toni, aged 15, not for a quick tour of the Tate Modern but because of bullying and drug-taking at her school. She had attended 20 out of 70 school days.

Russell believes that education is a preparation for life, and it does not just happen in school. Maybe not for the middle classes. However, one can reverse that proposition. School is a preparation for life, and it isn't just about education. It is also about acquiring interpersonal skills - developing a sensitivity to social cues and friendship.

All of which is expounded upon in Developing Minds, Challenge and Continuity Across the Life Span, the seminal book by Michael and Marjorie Rutter. Fifty thousand children a day truant, and there will be almost as many reasons why.

What the Rutters examine is "ineffective social processing as a possible determinant of peer relationship difficulties". The unpopular child, entering a group, is more likely to disagree, to assert their opinions, and to seek attention rather than blend in with the group.


Of course, a bullied child doesn't, "ask for it" but in certain circumstances, a teenager, for instance, may need extra support to learn how to deal with others. And that may not happen at home.

Truanting habitually concentrates on the child's circumstances. Often, however, a girl or boy is thriving but fails to attend because of a parent's needs, not their own. Sometimes, parents are ill, sometimes needy. The child becomes sucked into a claustrophobic world.

Russell argues that government has to think about how to make schools a place where pupils want to be. What's equally important, perhaps, is devising innovative strategies to encourage dependent adults to literally let their children go.