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An analysis of the latest truancy figures shows that the government’s tough message is not being heard by those it is intended for. Ming Zhang reports.

The national truancy tables published by the Department for Education and Skills have told a similar story for the past few years and this year’s national attendance outcomes are no exception. In 2002-3, the truancy rate (unauthorised absences) at secondary school was stuck at a stubborn 1.1 per cent.

In contrast there was a noticeable reduction in secondary schools’ authorised absences, down by 0.4 per cent over the previous year. So why do truancy rates remain persistently high while authorised absences are falling? What do this year’s outcomes tell us? To answer these two questions, we need to examine what truancy really is.

Under the school registration regulations, if a pupil is absent for a reason which has not been agreed by the school the absence is regarded as unauthorised absence, commonly known as truancy. If the pupil has what is regarded by the school as a justifiable reason for being away, for example, a religious observance day, a family holiday, an audition for a television job, or sitting a recognised music examination, the absence is recorded as authorised.

The significance of distinguishing authorised and unauthorised absences is important as parents can be prosecuted for their children’s unauthorised absences. Also, it is the rates of unauthorised absence that give us a clear picture of the scale of the problem hindering the educational opportunities of children from the most disadvantaged families and neighbourhoods. Previous research has already established that there is a strong link between truancy and disadvantaged backgrounds.^1,2

But while truancy is an issue which mostly affects children and young people from disadvantaged families, children who have authorised absences seem to come from all kinds of social background. They include those from relatively affluent families who may take one of their two annual family holidays during term time and children from poor families who are more likely to suffer from poor health. A survey of Kingston school absentees in 1999-2003 found that 68 per cent of authorised absentees were by pupils who in their schools’ view did not have attendance problems. In contrast to the so-called "persistent truants", most of those who had authorised absences were not known to social services or the education welfare officers. They are the pupils "who just have odd days off" with good reasons, according to their teachers.

In contrast, pupils who have "unauthorised absences" are very often the ones who are well-known to local agencies for committing petty crimes or having other behaviour problems. By year 10 or 11, most of this group will be known to social services, police or youth offending teams. It was this group that was the focus of the Social Exclusion White Paper in 1998 which laid the foundations for the government’s target of reducing truancy by one-third between 1999 and 2002 and a further 10 per cent by 2004, and this is still the group the government is most concerned about.

In the past few years, there have been high-profile anti-truancy publicity campaigns aiming to send out to communities and parents that truancy will not be tolerated. Thousands of press releases from local education authorities have been fed to the national and local press about the fining and jailing of truants’ parents, presented as shamefully irresponsible for failing to stop their children truanting.

Middle class parents are not the intended target, but they also feel the heat when headlines suggest there may be a new breed of "irresponsible parents" who take their children out of schools for family holidays. As a result, fewer are taking children on holiday during term time or allowing budding child actors to audition for parts which would involve missing too much school. As a matter of fact, many children in this group are already good attenders, if not the best ones.

And research has already told us that absence from school has a far more negative effect on children from disadvantaged backgrounds than on those from better off families. In their study, Douglas and Ross related pupils’ composite scores on reading, vocabulary, intelligence and arithmetic tests taken at the age of 11, to their school attendance records over the four years.³ They found the expected negative effect of absences on academic attainment among children from relatively poorer families but the academic performance of children from middle class groups was not affected by absence from school. Douglas and Ross did not examine why school absenteeism damaged the academic performance only of the poorer children, but we might guess that middle class leisure and family holidays include learning opportunities which are rarely available in disadvantaged households. So while odd day absences from school by materially privileged children have no noticeably negative effect on their academic attainment, unauthorised absences which are most prevalent among disadvantaged children have an extremely negative effect on their academic performance, and therefore on their chances in adult life. We should then be very concerned at this year’s national absence outcomes which indicate no reduction in truancy which is most prevalent among the most disadvantaged children.

The implication of these absence outcomes is a widening gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils in terms of academic attainment. Recent OECD/Unesco international studies found the UK had one of the biggest gaps in attainment between advantaged and disadvantaged children, and these findings underline the importance of helping persistent truants.⁴

It is encouraging to find that the government’s green paper has accepted that truancy is still a persistent problem and remains a challenge for both the government and everyone working with children, young people and their families. Although the proposed integration of children’s services should not be seen as a panacea to the truancy problem, it would create the opportunity to provide multi-dimensional support which, if well organised, would be accessible to every child who misses out on education.

Integrated provision could, for example, include community-based learning opportunities, which would break the link between education and enforced school attendance. This could create a more user-friendly model of learning that would motivate many disadvantaged families and their disaffected children to access education.

The extended schools initiative and the notion of flexible learning could address the fact that attending school does not necessarily mean being educated for everyone. Most persistent truants are so disaffected that they simply do not learn even if they have been forced back to schools. Serving as a hub of community and family learning, extended schools could motivate many young people and their parents to learn in an unconventional but flexible way. Distance learning and e-learning are already showing huge potentials in providing an effective way of alternative learning.

¹ M Zhang, Truanting truth, 0-19, September 2002

² M Zhang, "Link between child poverty and school absenteeism," Pastoral Care in Education, Blackwell Publications, 2003

³ JWB Douglas, JM Ross, "The effects of absence on primary school performance," British Journal of Education Research 38, 28-40, 1965

⁴ OECD/Unesco Pisa Study, Literacy Skills for the World of Tomorrow - Programmes for International Student Assessment, Pisa, 2003

Ming Zhang is researching British compulsory education at Cambridge university. zmzZZ@cam.ac.uk