by Pamela Readhead
Parents of persistent truants are to face fast-track court action and the possibility of jail sentences after government figures revealed a record number of students were skipping lessons. The annual attendance statistics released in October showed that despite the £900m spent on initiatives to improve schoolchildren's behaviour and attendance, truancy rates in England's secondary schools rose by over 10% last year and 55,000 pupils missed school each day.
The government is now threatening to take tough measures against the parents of a 'hard core' of 8,000 truants in 146 schools unless attendance improves within 12 weeks. They could face a fine of up to £2,500 or three months in jail. According to the Department for Education and Skills (now the Department forChildren, Schools and Families) about 7,500 parents are already taken to court each year, although only a few receive custodial sentences.
ESRC researcher Richard Bailey, Professor of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University, says that penalising parents is not the answer. 'The problem lies in the classroom. Teachers are overwhelmed by the dominance of targets and are hamstrung by the pressures of the national curriculum,' he says. 'They no longer have scope for innovative and creative teaching and it is not surprising that children become bored and disaffected.'
Richard Bailey'sresearch into disaffection set out to identify teaching practices which were motivating and engaging for pupils. Using data from case studies, questionnaires and a survey of head teachers in Leeds, Professor Bailey and his co-researcher, Dr Jon Tan of Leeds Metropolitan University, found that teachers had little training or support in dealing with disruptive pupils and few opportunities to benefit from the good practice of others.
"Teachers are overwhelmed by the dominance of targets... They no longer have scope for innovative and creative teaching and it is not surprising that children become bored and disaffected."
The study found that pupils became more interested in schoolwork if the stigma of personal failure was removed from the classroom. 'In the current competitive environment where some schools are labelled as “failing,” schools have to find new ways to motivate children at risk of truanting,' says Bailey. The researchers found pupils responded far better if they were encouraged to ask their own questions rather than simply to answer questions set by the teacher. They also needed to feel that what they were learning was relevant to their own lives and interests. Motivation increased in schools which made an effort to create links from one subject to another and coordinated activities across the curriculum,' says Bailey.
Bailey found that truancy and disaffection was often related to what happened at home and that building links between school, family and community was very important. AnotherESRC-funded project led by Professor Jackie Scott at the University of Cambridge found that cohesive families and good youth-parent communications had a decisive influence on whether teenagers managed to overcome apparent disadvantage and make a success of their lives. However, she warns that parents receive mixed messages from the State and that 'there is too little acknowledgement that parenting teenagers is a tough job.'
A project at the ESRC ResearchCentre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics also found that family background had a strong impact on attitudes towards truancy, but that children's behaviour was also strongly influenced by economic incentives. Based on a model using data from the US, the LSE findings suggest that teenagers may see truancy as the best financial option. 'For some individuals the rewards from working now or engaging in crime are so large, or the return to education so low, they choose to truant,' the report says.