Subscribe to our Blog
Maybe truant officers were a good idea after all…........
There are three main determinants of student achievement: what is taught, how it is taught, and how long it is taught for. School for Thought mainly focuses on effective teaching, but perhaps we should be paying more attention to the other two elements. A new analysis from Johns Hopkins University makes the point that the most effective teaching in the world won’t help absentee students.
The fact that most education systems don’t track absenteeism (it’s the same in Canada) shows educators’ surprising lack of concern over chronic absentees. The Johns Hopkins University study reports that some American states have begun tracking absenteeism and then moving heaven and earth in an effort to ensure that all students attend school every day. Perhaps Canadian authorities could take a leaf from their book. H/T TB
But merry old England they do.
School attendance and absence: the law
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Schoolslearninganddevelopment/YourChildsWelfareAtSchool/DG_066966
A series of articles on absenteeism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/truancy
“Department for Education figures show that the unauthorised absence rate for state primary and secondary schools in England for the autumn term of last year stood at 0.9% – about the same as the same term in 2010, when the rate was 1%.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jun/14/truants-school-absence-rate
“I don’t like to keep on about Gove, but he does pop up with odd ideas. Now it’s fines for truancy to be taken from child benefit, as advised by his behaviour tzar, Charlie Taylor. Ordinary fines are hopeless, suggests Govey, because “they’re often reduced to account for an adult’s expenditure on satellite TV, alcohol and cigarettes”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/apr/16/michael-gove-fight-truancy
“Headteachers should be able to impose increased fines on parents whose children miss school without a valid reason and the money will be docked automatically from child benefit if they fail to pay, a government adviser has said.
Proposals published on Monday by the government’s expert adviser on behaviour, Charlie Taylor, would allow schools to impose fines of £60 for truancy, rising to £120 if they are not paid within 28 days.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/apr/16/truancy-fines-deducted-from-child-benefit
And now children of the 4 year old set will now be fine or really their parents.
“Children as young as four who miss nursery or the reception year of school will be the focus of a new crackdown on truancy – even though education is not compulsory until the age of five, the government has announced.
Figures on attendance in reception, when children are aged between four and five, will be published by the Department for Education so schools can judge their performance on pupil absence.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/apr/16/truancy-crackdown-include-children-aged-four
My favourite - a personal account
“Jenn Ashworth: Why I refused to go to school
‘Who wants to be locked into a room with 30 people dressed just like them, to be startled by a bell every 35 minutes, to queue for lunch for 40 minutes and be made to stand outside in the cold twice a day?’ Jenn Ashworth most definitely did not…....But isn’t it also true that there are plenty of adults (most, perhaps) who would not choose to spend their days locked into a series of rooms with 30 people dressed just like them; to be startled by a bell every 35 minutes; ........But I wrote about it in my diary. “I will go to their shitty fucking school,” I wrote, and the handwriting is recognisably mine, in 15-year-old ballpoint pen that is fading but scratched through two pages, “I will get these stupid exams and I will go away to university and NEVER COME BACK.”......n preparation for writing this, I had a long conversation with my mum. She told me it would be hard for anyone to trust an 11-year-old to know what was best for her, that the education welfare officers and other suits involved with the case threatened her – regularly – with prison if she didn’t get me to school, without giving her any useful information about how….....”
And the mother is she enough confidence - “She reminded me, without saying anything, that she knew me. That if she’d have found her confidence, she probably would have given me a library ticket and left me to it. “
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/13/jenn-ashworth-refusing-to-go-to-school
She has a point, disliking mainstream school, is not a mental illness. The few NL parents who are living and raising their children in England, pay the school fines as a regular costs on travel. What is brought up the most, the officers knocking at the door, at 12 noon, giving the parents who work in the health field, a hard time that their kids don’t look sick. And the fine being issue…....Money racket, in England for what amounts to be 1 percent of the true absenteeism rate, but fining 99 percent of the parents and students who are not the chronic absentees….or label the student on having a mental illness.