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Prosecuting parents has made no difference to truancy rates, reports Ming Zhang. Would prosecuting the truants themselves be more effective?

"Dear rulers... if the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other material duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose objective it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men." (Martin Luther, 1524.)

Nearly 500 years ago, Luther castigated parents who were failing to send their children to school, and advocated compulsion. It was more than 350 years before compulsory elementary schooling education was introduced in England, but education was widespread before schooling was mandatory and free. By 1870 nearly all children were receiving some sort of schooling and the country was enjoying a literacy rate of more than 90 per cent. There was evidence too that working class people made enormous efforts to get their children to school.

After researching education among the working-class, the British economist James Mill, in an 1813 article in the Edinburgh Review, wrote:

We can ourselves speak decidedly as to the rapid progress which the love of education is making among the lower orders in England. Even around London, in a circle of fifty miles radius, which is far from the most instructed and virtuous part of the kingdom, there is hardly a village that has not something of a school; and not many children of either sex who are not taught more or less, reading and writing. We have met with families in which, for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.

When compulsory education was introduced to Britain and the US, it was believed that compulsion would be necessary only for one generation. But Luther’s so called "irresponsible parents" - reluctant or unable to get their kids to school - are still evident in the 21st century.

Indeed the introduction of compulsion seems to have made little difference to school attendance rates. In 1870 before compulsory education was introduced, the school board in Leeds achieved an attendance rate of 89 per cent among the children on the school roll. The attendance returns made in June 2001 indicated that the attendance rate among Leeds secondary schools was also 89 per cent. In England and Wales, about 400,000 pupils who should be in school are absent on any one day. According to the official attendance returns, about 50,000 of these are so-called "truants" who are away without the schools’ permission. These rates of unauthorised absence in the past 10 years have remained stable at around 1 per cent for secondary schools and 0.5 per cent for primary schools.

The current government in its determination to combat school absenteeism, has introduced waves of legislation, regulations and other initiatives - among them the system of fast-track prosecution of the parents of truants. In a recent study we examined how effective punishing parents had proved to be in reducing truancy. The research used comprehensive figures of school attendance and parental prosecution in England and Wales. Forty-three local education authorities (LEAs) took part.

The research first examined whether more parental prosecution resulted in lower truancy rates. The correlation testing was carried out using LEAs’ average attendance rates and truancy rates between 1999 and 2002. The result of the testing suggests that there is no relationship between the number of prosecutions and the levels of school absenteeism. A correlation co-efficient of negligible 0.075 (maximum is 1) is recorded, while at least 0.35 is considered statistically significant.

We then examined the change in attendance rates that occurred in the LEA areas between 1999 and 2002 in England and Wales. When the changed values of attendance rates and the prosecution statistics of 43 LEAs were analysed, it was found that there was no link between the number of court cases against parents and the improvement or reduction in school attendance rates. The correlation coefficients between the two variables are 0.296 for secondary schools and 0.031 for primary schools. Both are statistically insignificant, producing no evidence that more parental prosecution would bring about improvement in school attendance.

The obvious message from the research findings is that we should not rush further into using the courts, fines or imprisoning of parents in our efforts to combat truancy. In most non-attendance cases, absenteeism is just a symptom of various entrenched familial and domestic problems. To address those issues more effectively, parents should be empowered through professional support. With its focus on parents’ responsibility for school attendance, the government must pay more attention to the front-line services and establish a national standard for services working with children and families.

But for secondary school pupils at least, it may be a mistake to target parents. In the UK, children of 10 are criminally liable for offences committed, although they benefit from consideration of attenuating circumstances. If secondary school aged pupils - and even children in the last years of primary school - can be charged and prosecuted for criminal offences, why is it that our education laws do not allow young people themselves but only their parents to be prosecuted for truancy?

Attendance legislation should hold young people responsible for their own behaviour, including school attendance. When compulsory education was first introduced in this country, it applied to children who were below 13 years old. The same attendance legislation now applies to young people up to 16. Today’s secondary school pupils mature physically much earlier than their counterparts 100 years ago, and are also accustomed to making many more choices and decisions than their predecessors.

We all know that many truants who are absent from their final stage of schooling are genuinely out of their parents’ control. Serious consideration should be given to amending the attendance laws in such a way that would allow older truants - not their parents - to be prosecuted for truancy.

Ming Zhang is principal education officer, education welfare service, Kingston upon Thames. E-mail: ming.zhang@rbk.kingston.gov.uk