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The government's attitude and approach to school attendance has become more punitive in recent years. Education-related penalty notices - which fine parents or threaten them with imprisonment for allowing their children to truant from school - were introduced early last year. When it became clear towards the end of 2004 that only a handful of local authorities had chosen to use this new power, the Department for Education and Skills intervened, asking all chief education officers in England to ensure they had a local penalty notice procedure in place by the end of the year.

Unfortunately, the assumption behind this coercive approach is that irresponsible parents are the root cause of truancy - and by default, the root cause of low educational achievement. All its potential consequences - lives blighted by poverty, antisocial behaviour and crime - are laid at the parental door.

The tradition of blaming parents has persisted among educators and politicians for many generations, and it remains a strong ideological justification for today's "quick-fix" punitive measures to address social problems.

Of course, the link between low educational achievement and criminal behaviour is not new. In 1807, during the debate of a plan for the Education of the Poor, parliamentarian Whitebread advised people to "search the Newgate calendarÉ the great majority of the executed in London every year were Irish; the next in order were English, and last Scots. This was in exact proportion with their respective systems of education among the lower orders".

Yet many commentators and parliamentarians have questioned whether "irresponsible" parents - who are often poor and ill-educated themselves - are best placed to ensure their children receive a suitable education. Recent research and historical evidence suggests that punishing parents in an attempt to address truancy is doomed to failure.(1) In fact, my research finds no direct or secondary effects of parental prosecution on truancy rates whatsoever. Rather, it suggests that the major hindrances to universal education have, throughout history, been poverty, child labour, class prejudice and religious bigotry.

If you look back, there was no formal schooling for the poor until the early 17th century, when Christ's Hospital in West Sussex was founded. The school was set up on the orders of Edward IV after he was moved by a sermon by Bishop Ridley which described the desperate conditions in which poor street children were living.(2)

The foundation of Christ's Hospital was exceptional. Poverty has always been a major barrier to children's access to education - and little has changed in the past century. In the 1870s, a major part of the parliamentary investigation into the living conditions of working-class families in London was based on the records of school boards' attendance officers, who witnessed the widespread poverty while enforcing school attendance. Their reports also made it clear just how much of a barrier child labour was to universal education. Deprivation often made it imperative for children from poor families to earn, rather than learn.

Ironically, educating the poor has not always been acceptable in British society. Initially, the poor were fined for sending their children to school. After the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, the lower orders' demand for education became so overwhelming that a petition was presented by the Commons to Richard II in 1391. It asked the king to forbid "villains" (from the original word meaning "villagers") from sending their children to school.(3)

Nevertheless, over the past 100 years, the barrier to the poor's access to education has no longer been the overt rejection of the lower orders' admission to schools, but schools' "snobbish" curriculum. For generations, an elitist curriculum served the interests of the privileged few, in effect fostering an "anti-school" culture among the children of the working class. This remains a problem in today's comprehensive schooling system.

Before the introduction of compulsory education, the contribution that the churches made to education was unquestionable. Among them, the Church of England was a dominant provider of school places. Even at the end of the 19th century, three-fifths of the available places in schools were in Church of England schools.

Paradoxically, it was exactly this dominance that drove the Church to resist the introduction of compulsory education. The Church's resistance to the possibility of a state-controlled schooling system forced legislators to be cautious.

Also, as an unintended consequence, the Anglican bias among the lawmakers caused resentment and mistrust among other religious bodies. In response to pressure from the Anglican Church, Sir James Graham's Factory Bill in 1843 included an education clause, specifying that schools for factory children should have Anglican teachers and religious instruction. In fact, this clause would have introduced the first legal requirement for every child to receive a school education. However, the Anglican bias stirred opposition from other religious groups which eventually forced Graham to drop the education clause altogether. Its abandonment was typical of religious bigotry's negative effects on the advancement of popular education in England. Mistrust among religious groups delayed the introduction of full-scale mass education for a further 35 years.


So what now? Although "irresponsible parents" have traditionally been blamed for their children's educational failure, there is no evidence to suggest it is the most significant factor hindering poor children's access to education. The late E G West, despite his controversial argument against any state school system, reminded us not to mistake poor parenting for the root cause of children's educational failure.(4)

He wrote: "The choice between food and education in these circumstances is not normally lightly made by anybody. If the state does decide to intervene in such cases, therefore, it cannot be on the grounds of the same sort of protection as that directed against physical aggression of any kind; the intervention called for will largely be to counteract not irresponsibility but poverty."
Recent research has reinforced the significance of the link between low school attendance and poverty.(5) And the state must accept that truancy is a complicated social problem. If the government wishes to achieve maximum school attendance, it must overcome deprivation and poverty.

Lastly, if our aim is to achieve a genuinely sustainable and accessible mass education, investment and improvement in the preventive and front-line supporting agencies, such as early years services and education welfare services, are an urgent task. Constantly creating agencies, such as Connexions, and inventing "initiatives", such as on-the-spot fines, will neither bring about more genuine support for children and families nor help to achieve better school attendance.

ABSTRACT
This article derives from current research into British compulsory education. The author draws on historical evidence identifying poverty, child labour, class prejudice and religious bigotry as the major hindrances to mass education. He argues that relying on coercive measures such as issuing penalty notices to tackle truancy will fail to address the real issues, and therefore will not help to improve school attendance.

REFERENCES
(1) M Zhang, "Time to change truancy laws? - compulsory education, its origin and modern dilemma", Pastoral Care in Education, Blackwell Publications, 2004
(2) S J Curtis, History of Education in Great Britain, University Tutorial Press, 1968
(3) A F Leach, English Schools at the Reformation, Constable, 1896
(4) E G West, Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy, Liberty Fund, 1994
(5) M Zhang, "Truanting truth", 0-19, 2002

FURTHER INFORMATION
J Reeves, Recollections of a School Attendance Officer, British Library Photocopy of University of Hull's Single Collection, 1913

CONTACT THE AUTHOR
Email: Ming.zhang@rbk.kingston.gov.uk
The Education Department
Guildhall 2
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey KT1 1EU

Ming Zhang is principal education welfare officer for the Royal Borough of Kingston's local education authority. Zhang is also a part-time researcher at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. He is currently researching British compulsory education while writing regularly on truancy and compulsory education.