Tories target DfES over truancy rates
The Conservatives have claimed that truancy rates have gone up by 15% under Labour compared with the final year of the Tory government.
Over one million school children skipped classes last year, according to the party, despite the Government’s £650m campaign to combat truancy.
When Labour came to power in 1997, it promised to cut truancy by one-third by 2002.
The Government has had some success with policies such as conducting daytime sweeps of the streets to check on children out of school, financial incentives for schools to improve their attendance records, and measures against parents of truants, including a £2,500 fine or up to three months in jail.
But, according to the Conservatives, all the tough talk and apparent action has not been matched by results, with 566,644 secondary school pupils missing school without permission at least once last year, while in primary schools, 564,445 children played truant.
Shadow Education Secretary Damian Green claimed that the figures were “yet another example of how [the Government] have failed to keep their promises on education”.
He added: “What schools need is a return to the power of heads to impose discipline, and an improvement in the vocational curriculum so that all children feel they are gaining something useful from every school day.”
Tackling truancy is still high up the agenda for the DfES, with an extra £470m due to be ploughed into new strategies in time for the start of the next academic year.
But the department may have to review its options, with the BBC reporting today that new research due out next month is expected to claim that strong deterrents such as custodial sentences for parents have little or no effect on truancy rates.
