Ask any adult and chances are they’ll admit to having skipped school at least once in their life. But most of those adults will have done it once or twice, been caught and returned to school, never to skive again. New Scottish figures show that the problem of truancy is worse than ever. Just as concerning is the number of kids who stayed away from school with permission – to do everything from go on holiday, to weddings, even to make court appearances.
Nearly a fifth of Scottish pupils played truant in 2003-4, according to figures from the Scottish Executive and that on an average school day, 4,600 pupils were playing truant.
The
figures also revealed that 50,000 pupils - one in 14 - are absent from
school on any given day. The statistics reveal that about 140,000 of the
country's 740,000 pupils skipped classes in 2003-4 and that on an average
school day 4,600 pupils were playing truant. On top of that, 4,000 were
on holiday, 14,000 sick and about 820 temporarily barred from school.
Others were away for numerous reasons from attending family weddings to
hospital appointments.
The statistics also showed that, while truancy rates remained at about 0.3 per cent at primary school, they rose to about 1.6 per cent by the fourth year of secondary school.
Though the figures seem bad, it appears that a mere 9 per cent of pupils were responsible for 90 per cent of all truancy in Scotland. Pupils registered for free school meals, were twice as likely to truant as those who were not.
Truancy has always been an issue for the education system and ironically it is often the pupils who need the most help at school who choose to stay away. Schools are often criticised for poor truancy records but parents have to take some responsibility too. All too often it is a case of history repeating itself – parents who feel they gained little from the education system similarly fail to instil the importance of school attendance into their own children.
It seems that there are two distinct concerns in these statistics – the problem of truancy needs to be addressed separately from the very different issue of parents taking their children out of school with permission.
Many children have bona fide reasons to be off school – be it for hospital or specialist appointments. And the issue of children taking family holidays during term time is a tough one. Some of the blame for this must lie with the leisure and tourism industry which stacks prices two, three and sometimes fourfold during school holidays. For some families, taking their children out of school for a holiday is the only way they can afford to give their youngsters this vital experience.
As for truancy, children need to realise that regularly skipping school will do them no good at all as they grow into young adults. It means they miss out on the learning and social structure of school, and the longer the absences, the more adrift they get, pushing themselves further into the under-culture of the potentially unemployable.
It’s
not this simple, but the very description of skipping school – playing
truant – makes light of a serious matter. Missing school - and the
chance to learn - is not a light-hearted misdemeanour, but a grave situation
which, in many cases condemns children to a life on the edge of society.
Playing truant, and missing out – on learning, and ultimately on
an ordinary life – is certainly no game.
