Fast track truancy prosecution ‘a success’
The Government has said that its new fast track process to prosecute parents of persistent truants is proving successful.
Figures to be published by the Department for Education and Skills on Wednesday show that of 1,490 cases started since January, more than half resulted in children returning to school so that no prosecution was necessary.
The fast track scheme gives parents 12 weeks to improve their child’s attendance – if there is no improvement by the eighth week a court summons is sent out. If the case goes to court, parents can be fined up to £2,500 or be jailed for up to three months.
‘I think what it proves is that, where we put a minority of parents into the court system, 50% of them who haven’t been co-operating subsequently co-operate, their children are back in school and their truancy is brought to an end’, Education Minister Ivan Lewis said in an interview with Sky News today.
‘When we proceed with prosecution in the most extreme of circumstances, those sanctions do and can work.’
He denied that the policy was unfair and impacting most on deprived families least able to pay fines.
‘The greatest cruelty to those children and those families is to allow truancy to continue as we have done historically. What happens is that those children drift into crime and anti social behaviour. The truants of today become the parents of tomorrow.’
The Shadow Education Secretary, Damian Green, said that although this news was welcome the long term solution to truancy resided not in initiatives and threats, but in making school a useful and worthwhile experience for all children.
‘This means giving a decent education to less academic children, who too often are set on the road to truancy by boredom and a sense of failure,’ he added.
Another aspect of the Government’s desire to ‘get tough’ on truancy is the increasing use of ‘street sweeps’ around areas such as shopping centres where truant children are often to be found.
It is not yet clear whether this policy has had any long term effect on attendance, though it may help identify more clearly the extent of the truancy problem in individual schools.
