The children's secretary, it turns out, is aptly named. His range of measures designed to tackle bad behaviour in schools are a load of balls. Hefty fines - as much as £1,000 - will be imposed on parents who fail to keep their children at home, and "off the streets", while they are excluded. Fines, fines and more fines. A D- for imagination, Ed Balls. You must try harder. There is no evidence that punishing people by hitting them in the pocket is effective.
Ok, parental responsbility is vital in ensuring children are engaged with education but, as always, the government is keen to emphasise personal responsibility while largely - and conveniently - neglecting its own role in providing education for excluded students. Despite its pledge to provide full-time education for those out of education for 15 days or longer (under new rules this will be reduced to five days), in reality the government provides the majority of excluded students a few hours schooling at most. They end up roaming the streets because they are bored and unoccupied.
If parents are to be required to keep their children off the streets, then the government really needs to help them do that by ensuring that they take their responsibility to provide proper, full-time education to those who are not in mainstream school.