The sick truth about truancy

Poor children miss school not because they want to, but because they’re ill, finds yvonne roberts

Parents have been taking the heat as the Government attempts to tackle school truancy. Middle-class parents are fined for taking their children out of school during term-time for a skiing holiday; at the other end of the spectrum, 7,500 parents a year are being brought to court for allowing their offspring to skip class.

Since September 2004, more than 32,000 parents have been placed in schemes to improve their child's attendance at school. But a report to be published in December by Ming Zhang, who researches compulsory education at Cambridge University, will say truancy shouldn't be the government's prime concern.

Zhang's team has monitored attendance at 76 schools over the past four years. Pupils' absences fall into 22 categories ranging from exclusion (when children are sent home for misbehaving) to unauthorised absences

Instead of fining parents, the government should be trying to find out who falls ill - and why

(truancy) to illness. His research shows that in the year 2004/5 absences due to illness represented more than 75 per cent of all cases of missed lessons. The numbers far outstripped truancy, which was to blame for only about 15 per cent of absences.

How can Zhang be sure that the absentee children aren't simply feigning illness? The answer, he says, is that his team monitored reports from teachers, education welfare officers and parents, and they confirmed that days lost were genuinely due to illness.

Who is most likely to become sick? Historically, it was the poor - and there is nothing to show that has changed. Zhang argues that instead of locking up and fining parents, the government should instead be trying to establish who gets sick and why.

If it's still overwhelmingly the disadvantaged - those who can least afford to miss out on education - then punitive measures are not the cure.

FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 6, 2006