As a dean there is always something to do. Lately, I seem to have been spending some time on truancy. What this boils down to is checking up on the patterns of truancy, and where they are becoming excessively predictable, getting the truancy service involved.
At school we can check up on whether kids have turned up or not. Then, if they don't turn up, and their guardians don't ring, we can ring them to see what is happening. When we do that we are taking on the parents responsibility - it is their job to ring us. If we ring too often, we find that they never ring us because they think they can wait for us to ring them. Some guardians are so anti their responsibilities, when they hear it is the school, they just hang up.
Then, having done that we can't do much more - there is no facility in school for leaving the school grounds, so we have Truancy Services. They don't have a whole heap of resources, but they do have a van. so they will go round to the kids house, and seek the reason for the absence. Sometimes that means they will then deliver the child to school. Other times they end up having a chat.
Truancy have strong links with the police and CYFS. If the child is being prevented from getting an education by the family, other agencies are likely to become involved. There is a grey area around the fifteenth birthday where it is hard to force a child to get educated, and after their sixteenth birthday, it appears there is no compulsion to education.
As a dean it is my responsibilty to make the chain of actions begin. The form teachers need to ring home when kids are away, but I think this just doesn't happen. When this doesn't produce good reasons for absence, then the office sends a letter, then truancy gets involved. If only it were that simple. As the first part of the chain doesn't function, all the rest of it seems to wobble a lot. And I end up having to make decisions based on a mess of unperformed actions! As I was told this morning - don't slay yourself.
Posted by Toni at May 31, 2007 01:51 PMGyah, the whole truancy thing can be a massive disaster. I don't get parents who don't want their kids to go to school. Esp the juniors! ALthough I do know of some familys (esp PI ones) where the teenage daughters had a lot of home and child care responsibilities.
Posted by: giffy at June 1, 2007 09:38 AM