What should be done about high truancy rates?

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The number of children playing truant from schools is not falling dramatically as the government had hoped.

The latest figures show that levels of truancy in England have hardly moved since the government set new targets 4 years ago.

Education welfare officer Ron Collinson says this can be explained by the fact that truancy is a complicated, multi-causal problem that cannot be conquered in a day.

Ron Collinson, Liverpool's Acting Principal Education Officer for Social Inclusion, answered your questions in a live forum.

Transcript

Newshost:
Hello and welcome to this BBC news interactive forum, I'm Andrew Simmons. We're taking your questions today on truancy. The latest figures show the government's initiative to reduce the problem aren't working. Fifty thousand children a day are playing truant and that figure is staying static. The government says it's going to crack down with fast track moves to bring parents before the courts and the increase of so-called truancy patrols to round children up.

Well joining me from Merseyside and Liverpool, in fact, Ron Collinson, education welfare officer for the city of Liverpool. I understand Ron that you've got 27 years experience of this problem?

Ron Collinson:
I have indeed all working for Liverpool.

Newshost:
Well thank you very much for joining us. We'll get to the questions in a moment but first of all what sort of initiatives have you tried in what must be a black spot for truancy in Liverpool?

Ron Collinson:
Well black spot I'm not so sure. We do have issues about attendance but they're the same in most big cities. We tackle it in a range of ways. We deploy a number of very experienced education welfare officers to schools, to help schools directly for their own attendance agenda and we roll out a series of central initiatives. The most recent of which and the one that's very much in the news is the truancy sweep teams.

Newshost:
That's right, indeed. Are they effective because it appears that for several years the figures nationally have just stood still - I mean are these sweep teams effective or not?

Ron Collinson:
I think sweep teams are, I they're not the answer on their own but they're certainly a part of the answer overall. We're fortunate in Liverpool, we recognise the problems that we have and our figures are moving - our figures are improving and we're bucking a national trend in that. The sweeps are a vital part of the work that we do.

Newshost:
Okay, let's get to the e-mails now. First one from Steve in the UK: "The law should go one step further and make the consequences of a child's actions more directly apparent to him or her. Instead of punishing the parent the child should be locked away for 60 days instead. Today's children seem to have no innate morals and are too selfish to learn any other way."

Ron Collinson:
That's a very severe view, I would have to say, of young people and I don't think any local authority or anybody that works with children the way that I do and my staff do would endorse something as draconian as that. There are roots whereby young people end in custody, they're generally not so severe and I don't believe that that would actually help us.

Newshost:
Okay, James from the UK: "Why does the NUT - National Union of Teachers - think that independent schools should be targeted as well as state schools? Looking at the statistics 0.1 per cent truant at independent schools themselves, less than 10 per cent of pupils, isn't the problem elsewhere?"

Ron Collinson:
Well I can speak for Liverpool. The independent sector in Liverpool is able to access help from the local authority if it wishes - no part of the community, education community, is excluded from our work. You're right that statistics bear out the fact that there seems to be less of a problem in that sector but there are still factors which affect attendance for young people in those schools and were it appropriate the authority will assist those schools, we will work with them.

Newshost:
Well moving on now to Debbie from Oxford - this is related to the jailing of Patricia Amos and the huge publicity that accompanied it: "Did it waken parents up to the fact that they must ensure their children attend school? Now the government is saying the situation is as bad as it was a year ago and is publicising a policy of even stiffer penalties for parents of truants." Not sure about the stiffer penalties but she wants to know why all this work?

Ron Collinson:
It drives home a very important message. The Patricia Amos case did work - we were undertaking another initiative in Liverpool at that time which involved us phoning out to the Liverpool direct service call centre large numbers of parents of pupils who were poor attenders. At the start of that initiative the Patricia Amos case happened, so we got a very strong instant and very genuine reaction to that from the people that we were talking to and schools reported exactly the same take on the same issue. It had an extreme impact and it certainly concentrates minds - that's what this message does - and it reinforces how important school attendance is.

Newshost:
Do you think though that in all cases that a sentence of jail is going to be adequate - isn't it over the top?

Ron Collinson:
I don't imagine for a minute, I haven't seen the final details of the fast track, although Liverpool is one of the authorities that will be involved in the pilot. I don't believe for an instant that every case will go to jail, I think the threat of jail though is very important.

Newshost:
Okay Mike Birch from Liverpool, he says: "If the parents are paying £7,000 per year to send their kids to school they do tend to turn up. This is a state school problem - if you get something for free you simply do not value it. Period. The problem is not getting these kids to school, isn't the problem convincing them that school can do something that's positive in their lives?"

Ron Collinson:
I agree with much of the statement, I don't believe it's just a state school problem. School attendance is vulnerable to a vast array of factors, they're not restricted to any particular sector or any particular part of our community. They can range from the very mundane to the extremely serious - matters that threaten life, limb and liberty. In terms of getting the message across to young people, I think that's true of whichever sector we're dealing with. You talk to young people in the right way, you convince them that school is fun and that there is something to be gained from it. You do have to talk about the negative sides of not going to school as well. You get the message across in which ever way that you can and you engender cultural change, certainly that's the route that Liverpool is taking.

Newshost:
Now I want to move on to a question from Nicola. I understand that you feel that the problems of truancy are down to a lot of separate issues, not necessarily deprivation - there's all sorts of issues. Nicola wants to know: "I had a terrible time trying to get my daughter to go to school after she'd been bullied and had already fallen behind with her work. The blame for the situation was squarely placed on our shoulders as we obviously had to be a dysfunctional family! Looking back, nearly 10 years on, I think the school had a large part to play in this traumatic time, I don't think much has changed now for bullied children, do you?

Ron Collinson:
I must admit I don't agree with those sentiments entirely. We do recognise that bullying is an issue for young people. Bullying, the threat of bullying, the perception that there may be bullying occurring - all those are very real causes for concern amongst our young people. But our schools are far too skilful to ignore cases like that, I have great faith in the school system. What's important within that though is that somebody tells us what is going on, that's part of the bullying problem is that there is a fear and there is a silence. If you break that silence and you talk to schools there are experienced staff available - both teaching and non-teaching staff - who will deal with that problem.

Newshost:
Now that's obviously one cause for children not wanting to go to school but what would you say is the main reason for truancy - what is the main area?

Ron Collinson:
I have a problem with the phrase truancy - I know it's the popular terms for this but non attendance is a fairer and a broader term for this. And I think at the end of the day the problem starts and finishes with families. Schools can play their part in occasionally creating the problem in a child's eyes and certainly in a family's eyes but at the end of the day it's down to families and how they manage themselves and how they reinforce the positive messages that are available for young people about school.

Newshost:
Now some of our viewers aren't sure about your assertion that the threat of jail is really a good way of dealing with this problem. Now Richard who's in England asks: "I don't think parents should be sent to jail for their kids truanting but the authorities should look at why kids are not going to school. In cases of extreme truancy where it's proved to be the fault of the parent then some form of punishment perhaps but how would that make their children go to school more?"

Ron Collinson:
It's a mute point. I would point out that currently the range of sanctions are fairly severe, they carry a potential fine for the parents of £2,500 per child and they can attract other sanctions such as parenting orders are other disposals open to the court at the same time. Despite that we still have, in the country, we still have unacceptable levels of poor attendance. So the message has got to get across in some other fashion. The take on the Patricia Amos case was so dramatic that it doesn't surprise me for one moment that the government has reacted to that and has moved to put measures in place that make that a reality for a number of authorities and not just in the isolated cases.

Newshost:
This issue of jail has prompted a lot of response from our viewers. Miss Fahima Khan from the UK, she says: "Parents shouldn't face jail for their children being truants, take, for example, a working mother who drops her son off and picks him up from school, if he plays truant at lunchtime how can she be at the gates at the end of the day, what can his mother do, she can't be a guard dog at the school gates can she now?"

Ron Collinson:
His mother doesn't have to - his mother has to do, in those cases, is has to work with the school and work with authorities such as the attendance and welfare service here and we will find an answer to that problem together. I mean nobody underestimates the difficulty of securing regular attendance, me, least of all, with the level of experience I have both as a professional and as a parent. In those cases I can't imagine that any authority is going to use the final sanction of jail - that would not be appropriate. The extreme cases of where somebody is totally refusing to work with us, it's not that there isn't an improvement, it's just that nobody is receptive to the idea of the help.

Newshost:
But don't you think that the government's taking the soft option here in actually putting all the responsibility on the parent, shouldn't the schools be obliged to pursue this issue more?

Ron Collinson:
Oh I think schools do.

Newshost:
But more.

Ron Collinson:
It's very difficult to know what more schools can do - they already devote an enormous amount of time and resources to this problem, far more than should be reasonably expected of them when their job is to teach children. They take it extremely seriously - schools employ a whole range of initiatives themselves, they actually employ a range of people to carry out this work above and beyond, in some cases anyway, above and beyond that supplied by the local authority. Schools really do play their part in this and it's schools reaching out of the authority and saying help us with this.

Newshost:
Time for one more, we're getting a little short of time. Helen from East Yorkshire: "Last year my dyslexic son was deteriorating at school and was unable to read and write. When the school failed to support him I took him out one afternoon each week for private tuition. I was threatened with prosecution and the child welfare services began an investigation. Luckily a tribunal agreed that my son's needs had been met at school and that our tuition had helped him. Why do parents have to pay for lack of support in schools for their children?"

Ron Collinson:
I cannot speak for another authority and I cannot comment directly on the facts of the case, just hearing that very brief description, but that wouldn't happen in this authority, I'm perfectly clear about that. Ourselves and the school would take a view on what was happening but I cannot imagine there would be a threat of prosecution.

Newshost:
Do you think that you've become a bit of a political football, do you ever get frustrated with the politicians for picking up on truancy in the way that they do?

Ron Collinson:
No I've worked for 27 years, as has been said, and it's been a lonely job on some occasions - battling without what feels like a great deal of resources and a great deal of support. It's a huge and a monumental task to raise attendance levels for everybody up and down the country. The fact that it's now being taken seriously and the fact that the politicians are recognising the consequences of non school attendance and the seriousness is to be welcomed with open arms.

Newshost:
Well thank you very much, we're going to have to leave it there I'm afraid. Many thanks to Ron Collinson for joining us and the best of luck with your work. From me Andrew Simmons thank you for watching and goodbye.