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Parents’ court date after truancy blitz
29/ 9/2006
A COUNCIL crackdown on truancy has resulted in 24 parents in Rochdale being handed fixed penalty notices.
They were issued because it was felt the parents were not prepared to take note of warnings about their children being absent from school.
Ten of the parents paid the money, but the remaining 14 will appear at Rochdale Magistrates Court in November.
The figures were revealed in the wake of government statistics, which showed that truancy was on the rise in Rochdale. The only consolation for local education chiefs is that the percentage increase in absences from Rochdale primary schools is below the national average.
Janet Vinter, team leader of Rochdale Council's education welfare service, believes the increase is linked with a high level of illnesses reported earlier this year, such as colds, flu and the winter vomiting bug and term-time holidays. She says a lot of work is being done to tackle the number of children playing truant.
And headteachers are urged to be vigilant when authorising time off school for term-time holidays.
She says an attendance-raising campaign was launched after absence data came from schools in May.
Forty three warning letters were sent to parents and of these 26 children have since shown improvement.
There is also a 'Fast Track' system in place, during which parents are called into meetings with the school.
They are warned that if there is no improvement the children would be withdrawn from the system and they could face a £1,000 fine in court.
If the parents commit an 'aggravated offence', worsening their child's behaviour by stopping the school from providing help, they could face a £2,000 fine or imprisonment.
Ms Vinter said: "We have never had an imprisonment in Rochdale and do not want that to happen.
"But regrettably it may well happen one day."
The truancy rate in secondary schools has risen, from 1.49 per cent of half day sessions missed to 1.52 per cent.
Nationally it has fallen by less than one per cent from 1.23 per cent to 1.22 per cent of half-day sessions missed.
But the number of sessions missed by primary school pupils playing truant has fallen by seven per cent, bucking the national trend.
The statistics were calculated after taking into account the number of pupils in each school, the number of half day sessions missed and how many of those were missed through authorised and unauthorised absences.
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16/11/2006 at 08:39