Unwillingly to SchoolBy Katrin Fitz HerbertEvery child with a poor school attendance rec

Unwillingly to School

By Katrin Fitz Herbert

Every child with a poor school attendance record is a child in danger. At best, he is in danger of not fulfilling his educational potential; at worst, he is in danger of cruelty or neglect.

Enforced school absence in childhood is sometimes used by adults to justify their own career failure. It is difficult for a child to play truant regularly if his parents are keen for him to attend school. Much truancy is openly condoned; as for the rest, not knowing that your children play truant is equivalent to not ensuring that they are at school. It shows lack of interest in their whereabouts, apathy about their education, or inability to control them — i.e., ineffective parents...

The characteristics which lead families to reject regular schooling are likely to have other detrimental effects on the children besides educational failure. For what could make parents decide that the most widely agreed route to secure employment, social acceptance and personal satisfaction is not for them？ The first reason is a general difficulty in dealing with family responsibilities, particularly in the stressful environment of modern cities. Getting the child to school on time is too much to cope with (alarm clock, breakfast, clothes, shoes, gym clothes, lunch money). Secondly, the child’s company may comfort a depressed, isolated mother.

The school’s insistence on uniforms or other obligations and, possibly, its undisguised disapproval of an "inadequate" family, may be the last straw. Children who grow up in such families are likely to be deprived in many ways besides education.

In these families, education is written off as a waste of time. For a child growing up, this is possibly more serious than the loss of education. Habitual non-attendance can accustom children very early in their lives to rejecting the values and legal requirements of society. It is a training in deviance and anti-social behaviour which can lay the foundation for a generally deviant career. The common progression from truancy or parentally-condoned absence to juvenile crime has been reliably established.

In greatest danger of all is the child who successfully plays truant for long periods without his parents’ knowledge. His personal isolation and alienation, not just from conventional behaviour but from his own family, puts him in danger of delinquency, drugs or mental illness in later life. Truancy has been called the "kindergarten of crime", and bad school attendance spells failure and possible unemployment in later life.

It was soon realized that non-attendance was too complex and serious a problem to be dealt with by education departments alone. Much responsibility for school attendance was, therefore, transferred to social workers. This move has, on its own, however, possibly created as many problems as it has solved. This is because the seriousness with which they regard non-attendance is an issue on which social workers and workers in education differ. Social workers tend to regard it as merely one symptom of social failure which, particularly if homelessness, physical neglect, marital problems and illness are present, does not justify more attention than the rest.

Workers in education consider the other problems as all the more reason why the children concerned should have the advantage of regular schooling. The longer they stay truant, the greater are their chances of getting into further trouble. One chief education welfare officer told me: "The best form. of social service you can do for deprived children is to see that they receive education in the normal school setting."

I was given access to a few cases of nine-year-old children selected by their head teacher for causing concern due to problems arising outside school. I read their files and talked to the workers involved about how each, from his professional point of view, saw the chain of events since the initial referral. In cases concerned with school absence, this method produced a commentary of the slow progression towards stalemate which can occur when two departments with different priorities are jointly responsible for solving the same problem. For how can a decisive plan for action ever be formed if it depends on the cooperation of two people who basically disagree？

Non-attendance can so injure a child’s life chances that it deserves to be tackled by a more single-minded attack than this. A concerted policy should focus on the following areas: first, the school’s own capacity for holding the interest of pupils; second, its efficiency in registering unexplained absences; third, school-oriented social work; fourth, boarding schools; and fifth, public attitude.

The general climate of a school is obviously a powerful factor in a child’s decision to play truant, so creating an acceptable school atmosphere is one of the most challenging assignments teachers face. It must, however, be distinguished from the separate task of setting up efficient machinery for following up suspected truants. This consists of treating any unexplained absence—even lateness, which is often an indication of absence to come as serious. If the school immediately queries the first and subsequent unexplained absence, it will be much more difficult for the child to become a habitual absentee.

The school’s success in keeping non-attendance to a minimum also depends on the effectiveness of its education welfare officer, the official link between school and home. Ideally, when alerted about a suspected absence, he makes an immediate home visit to see what has gone wrong. In the first instance he may simply go to "collect excuses", gradually forming his own idea of the real reason for the child’s absence the child is bullied at school, the mother is unhappy when the child is at school, the family does not get up in time, the parents don’t know about the truancy, the child has not got a uniform, and so on. Though the officer will do what he can to alleviate any problem he stumbles on, his main interest is to get the child back to school.

Another ingredient of a general attack on chronic non-attendance should be boarding education. Every Education Welfare Officer has his core of cases of children whose parents do not believe in education; who have such psychological problems of their own that they need their children for company or who are so anti-authority that they will not hand their children over to any representatives of the "establishment" they detest. These are the parents with whom the officer, and the school or social workers get nowhere and whose children get no education to speak of, if left in their home environment.

Teachers, education welfare officers and social workers are sometimes excessively reluctant to consider boarding school. They regard it as a punitive action with a certain finality for the child. Many referrals are, therefore, made too late to be really useful. Sending a child to a boarding school should be to improve a situation which is not going well. However, everybody is so wary of it, that we tend to use it when it is really too late; when parents are ready to be relieved of a child who is a problem—thus giving the child good reason to feel rejected. When the child is still wanted, and sent to boarding school against his parents’ will, then it can really solve the problem by answering the child’s educational needs, without destroying family bonds.

Finally, the public apathy towards truancy is a positive incentive to children who have difficulties at school. The man in the street, even when knocked sideways by a diminutive footballer during school hours, merely curses and walks on. Would absence rates be any different if the public occasionally "had a go" at obvious non-attenders and encouraged them to give their teachers another chance to make school worthwhile for them？

1.Every child with poor school attendance record is unable to fulfill his educational potential and is going to suffer cruelty or neglect. ()

2.Many parents do not know that their children play truant regularly, which shows their lack of interest in their children’s education or inability to control them. ()

3.Parent’s difficulty in dealing with family responsibility is not a reason which leads families to reject regular schooling. ()

4.Habitual non-attendance can cause children reject the values and legal requirements of society very early in their lives. ()

5.Truancy or parentally-condoned absence may or may not lead to juvenile crime. ()

6.Mental illness in later life is another bad effect of truancy. ()

7.Non-attendance is such a complex and serious problem that it can’t be dealt with by education department alone. ()

8.According to this passage, the social workers and educational department didn’t cooperate very well because they disagree basically. ()

9.According to the writer, registering unexplained absence is not very effective to resolve regular non-attendance. ()

10.Unlike the parents, the teachers, social workers and education welfare officers are unwilling to send truants to boarding school in the early stage.()