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Sceptics say bigger fines will not work

Eleven-year-old Christopher Batchelor used to refuse to go to school for up to five months at a time.

"I didn't like it that much because I usually got beaten up at my old school," he said.

His mother says he used to refuse even to get dressed. Counselling and family therapy helped to get him back to school.

"You can't force a child to get dressed," said his father, Robert.

"You can't beat them and say: 'You're getting dressed, you're going to school.' So in those cases, fining them would just add to the problem."

'Desperate'

Professor Ken Reid of Swansea Institute says there are no simple solutions to what is a complex problem. The starting point has to be: why are children not wanting to go to school?

"A lot of parents condone their children and these are the ones that David Blunkett is quite rightly targeting," he said.

"But a lot of parents are desperate. They try and do everything possible to get their children to school - dress them, feed them, take them to the school gate - but the children still truant."

Alex Kilpatrick of the Magistrates' Association believes the higher fines, and power to arrest parents who do not turn up in court, can work.

Few prosecutions

"We have got to make these parents realise that they have got an obligation to get these children to school," he said.

According to The Department for Education there are no centrally-held figures for the number of prosecutions of truants' parents, but it estimates that there are only about 60 in England each year.

It says the fines that are imposed are typically between £30 and £150 - when the maximum possible is already £1,000 per parent per child.

The Secondary Heads Association doubts that higher fines will make a difference.

"As magistrates usually fine the parents a derisory amount, the increase to £5,000 is unlikely to make a difference, unless magistrates increase fines substantially," said its General Secretary, John Dunford.

"Increasing the level of the offence and requiring parents to be present in court will be helpful.

"For parents who require help rather than fines, external agencies must become more effective in helping schools which get the blame for high truancy figures."

These sentiments were echoed at Elliott Durham Comprehensive in Mapperley, Nottingham, which has one of the worst records in the country for unauthorised absences - 9.4% against the national average for secondary schools of 1.1%.

The Deputy Head, Rob Boothroyd, said that anything the government could do to help would be welcome. The 'big if' was whether it would be followed through, with the courts actually imposing higher fines.

Unemployment

One problem was that children whose parents were unemployed often did not have a good example to follow, he said.

"Punctuality and attendance is not a priority."

Other parents kept their children away from school because of family situations - a child of school age might be helping a single parent care for a disabled relative, for instance. These were not easy to resolve.

"But something needs to be done about it," he said. "We are trying every type of innovation as far as improving attendance is concerned."

The school had made gains by employing a full-time 'first strike' attendance officer, to contact parents as soon as their children did not turn up at school, by making children more responsible for their own attendance, and by rewarding good attendance.

"So if we're pushing all of those, then anything that can help from the government side is going to benefit schools like ours," Mr Boothroyd said.

At Willingsworth High School in Tipton, West Midlands, the Head, Hugh Ridley, said that a partnership with parents was important.

"Once parents and students feel that they are working together, there's much more chance that students will attend school regularly," he said.

One of his pupils, David Mansell, had been missing more than half his schooling "because I didn't like the lessons I had".

"My mates went so I went," he said.

His mother was at work and did not know where he was. She has been given a pager so that the school can now alert her immediately if he goes absent. His attendance has improved by 97% this year.

'Won't work'

The National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations said the idea of higher fines had been tried before.

"Fines of £1,000 didn't work and bigger fines won't work either," said its spokeswoman, Margaret Morrissey.

There was a "minuscule" minority of parents who did not care and in any area, social services and magistrates would know perfectly well who they were.

"Fining them more won't change their behaviour," she said.

"Most of them are on benefit and they will either pay the fines with money we have paid in taxes, or they won't pay at all and they will go to prison - which is probably where they spend most of their time anyway.

More money

"I understand Mr Blunkett's frustration over this issue, but I am just not convinced this will solve the problem.

"We should be looking instead at ways of encouraging these disaffected children to stay at school."

The National Association of Headteachers backed Mr Blunkett's plans.

"I wholeheartedly support the drive to bring home to those parents who condone and even encourage truancy the consequences of their actions," said its General Secretary, David Hart.

"Absence from school is so very damaging to the life chances of their children.

"But the story doesn't end there. I would like to see Mr Blunkett also giving more support to the schools worst affected by truancy. So often, the parents of the children missing out on school come from the most deprived backgrounds and the support that their children's schools need has to be expressed in cash terms."

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