Truancy report reveals uncomfortable truths

A new report on truancy will make uncomfortable reading for the government. For some young people, truancy becomes a way of life, and punitive measures would make no difference

are the two on a rainy afternoon Tuesday, and the Central Youth Club in Huddersfield a dozen young boys hit balls around the pool tables. Overhead, watch Hollyoaks on a large wall television, and some girls are looking on and off, from a leather sofa a little tired. One of them languidly playing with the remote, one with your phone

Most of these teenagers have lost huge chunks of their studies, all of which have been excluded from mainstream education. However, their presence here today represents a serious progress. This scene may seem meaningless - a small group of children hang in the main entrance, talking with cans of soft drinks in their hands - but in reality it is allowed chill-out after a morning of learning to use calculation sheets and work on a project on "Life in nature."

"Sometimes I lie in bed and just think," I rise today or not? , '"Says Dominique Saint-Hilaire, the girl with the remote." The school seemed to me that I pull down, and it depresses me. "

Like all adolescents, age 15, Dominique is enrolled in a program called options, by charity Rathbone as an alternative to regular schools. And with several of his classmates, recently attended the first national survey of persistent truancy, run by the charity. 300 young people have asked why did you miss school and what type of intervention could persuade them to run regularly.

The results will make uncomfortable reading for the coalition government. This fall, David Cameron announced that he had asked his review of social policy, established after the riots of the summer, consider cutting the benefits of parents who can not make their children go to school . However, seven in 10 respondents said Rathbone these measures make no difference to them at all.

just over half of respondents said their parents were aware that they were males, and nearly half said that their friends encouraged them to miss school. A fifth was arrested by the police while the oxen, and 55% had been excluded from school at some point. A quarter had missed school to care for the family. Many have faced chaotic family history, and most feel that the school was not really fair to them

Dominique, her thick red hair partially dyed and walked away from his face, tends to look down when talking, but below the difficulty of a spark from that it. His school did not give him the opportunity, he said. With seven half-sisters, six half-brothers and a host of cousins, some of which were not model students themselves, they think that seeing him coming, hit the ground with the label that tends to get stuck in all St. Hilaire around here.

"It was assumed that I was thick, not anywhere," he says. "Most of my siblings and cousins ??were there, and most of them have missed school, too. Many of them had ADHD. When you have a name down, ask for help if you say the job. "

9 In

, Dominique started to skip lessons in the morning as if she was in school, but then end up in the house of a friend, or suspended in the center of the city. Then one of his half-brothers died, and his life went off the road. She hated people at school asking about it, she said. "My mother has always been to be invited to meetings at school. She does not like, but what could I say? It has its own, "says Dominique. Fines and court appearances speak, but she did not believe in them: ".. I have never known this to happen, I do not believe in him" if his mother had been the benefits? "We m ' said that I went to school, but I could not. Anyway, my father gave my mother money. "

In Rathbone, have procedures to address the continued absence, and, theoretically, could end in court - but in the decade of the center was opened that never happened, according to its Manager, Rechelle Boothroyd ". / Aa>

"You must understand the difficulty for parents," she said. "Not physically, you can drag the children out of bed - they know they are entitled to call the child protection if they do."

The main strategy is to involve children - about 30 of them today - in a way that their old schools generally do not. The fundamentals are taught through projects and games, and lessons have been renamed to "sessions" so that students do not have their usual negative reaction to them. And to a large extent, it works - here is the presence of 70%, which, though not brilliant, is far better than most of these students were the management of other places. Charity survey found that more than half of persistent truancy leads would lose specific lessons they did not like - PE being the largest shutdown, followed by mathematics

But the main reason that young people are absent from school, according to the spokesman for Gibson Rathbone, Peter, is that it does not seem relevant to them.

"We read a lot about how local authorities and the police" crack down "on the bulls, but very little about what they do to prevent absenteeism in the first place. The number one reason given by respondents was just "I hate school. We have a real sense they are not in contact with the academic world, and willing to do something concrete. Just do not think that school is relevant to them. "

• Meanwhile, the rhetoric of politicians tend to go in the opposite direction. Cameron suggestion that students should be forced to school for tougher sanctions against parents is not new. It was first raised by the Labour government in 2002, but was eliminated in silence.
The truth, as evidenced by official government statistics on school absenteeism, truancy is that, as the ills of education, for many, is closely linked to deprivation. Among the absent students defined as the persistence - that is, those who miss more than 15% of their education, more than a third are eligible for free school meals, one in seven do not have English as their first language four in 10 have special needs.

The Department of Education made a few concessions to these factors, although he admits that students are missing school because they often lag behind. A DfE spokesperson said it was the responsibility of parents and schools to curb the continuing absence: "Even one day lost from school without a good reason too," said

"Parents should have a real stake in the education of their children and face real consequences if their children attend school at all times. That's why we see if we limit the benefits of parents whose children have always truant. "
Results Rathbone as no surprise to the directors, however. Joan McVittie, director of the Woodside High School in Haringey, north London, and also president of the Association of Chiefs of school and university, says the key is to ensure that the school is interesting - and relevant - the students. The overall attendance at school increased by 87% in 1995 to 94% today.

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