Truancy Truancy: Short and Long-term Solutions is a practical and accessible guide to dealing with the problem of truancy and non-attendance. It is the first book on the issue to actively focus on solutions to the problem, rather than just the causes. The book is full of practical examples of the latest ways in which schools, teachers, education welfare officers and LEAs try to overcome their attendance difficulties. The author identifies 120 short-term solutions as well as several long-term strategic approaches. He also considers issues such as parental-condoned absenteeism, alternative curriculum schemes and mentoring, while the final chapter presents some strategic issues which policy makers and politicians need to overcome. The book provides all teachers, heads of year, deputy heads, head teachers, education welfare staff, social workers, learning mentors and other caring professionals with a repository of up-to-date ideas and potential solutions. It is essential reading for anyone involved in addressing the challenge of truancy. Ken Reid is Deputy Principal at Swansea Institute of Higher Education. He is also the author of Truancy and Schools and Tackling Truancy in Schools, both published by Routledge. Truancy Short and Long-term Solutions Ken Reid First published 2002 by Routledgefalmer Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright© 2002 Ken Reid Typeset in Gill and Goudy by BC Typesetting, Bristol The Open Access version of this book, available at www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record forth is book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN I 3 : 978-0-415-27575-0 (pbk) Contents List of figures vi Acknowledgements viii Foreword: About this book ix 1 The challenge of truancy and school absenteeism 1 2 Typical schools 20 3 Short-term solutions I 31 4 Short-term solutions II 59 5 Short-term solutions III 75 6 Short-term solutions IV 98 7 Long-term strategic approaches I 115 8 Long-term strategic approaches II 134 9 Parents and parental-condoned absenteeism 146 10 Alternative curriculum schemes 163 11 Mentoring 179 12 The way forward 190 Bibliography 195 Index 197 Figures 3.1 100 plus short-term strategies currently in use in schools 32 3.2 Recommended daily home learning-based activities 55 6.1 Percentage of pupils working during term-time by region 109 6.2 Type of illegal work amongst school-age pupils by region 110 7.1 The five-year cycle using the PSCC scheme 117 7.2 Adapting the PSCC scheme in a numerical way 126 7.3 The Davison model of the PSCC scheme (the RAG project) 127 7.4 Using the colour-coded PSCC system for exclusion 131 8.1 Panel-based approaches to combating absenteeism 136 8.2 Key staff who could be involved in the panel processes 138 8.3 Standardising processes between PSCC scheme and panel- 141 based SSTG approach 8.4 Longer-term strategic approaches utilising the panel scheme 144 9.1 Categories of parental-condoned absence 153 9.2 Profiles of categories of parental-condoned absence: Category 1 154 9.3 Parental-condoned absence: Category 2 155 9.4 Parental-condoned absence: Category 3 156 9.5 Parental-condoned absence: Category 4 158 9.6 Parental-condoned absence: Category 5 159 10.1 Some existing alternative curriculum strategies 164 10.2 Pupils’ preferred out-of-school activities by year 175 10.3 Activities available through the MAP programme 176 10.4 The MAP Project 178 11.1 Popular mentoring schemes 180 Acknowledgements I would like to thank several people for all their help during the preparation of this book. First and foremost I offer my thanks to Angela Harris for typing the manuscript and for her patience and help during the editorial process. Second, I would like to thank Alison Foyle, Anna Clarkson and all their colleagues at RoutledgeFalmer for their help and advice during the production of this book. Third, I would like to thank a number of colleagues for their assistance in facilitating issues covered in the text. These include: Mike Weston, assistant headteacher at Davison High School, Worthing, and Sheila Wallis, headteacher at the same school; Elaine Reynolds, senior teacher at Mountain Ash Comprehensive School and her headteacher, Mick Guilfoyle, for permission to use evidence from the MAP Project (The Mountain Ash Partnership Out-of-School Learning Project funded by the New Opportunities Fund) for which the author is acting as the objective, external evaluator; Andrew Harvey, Kerica Hunt and Richard Hillary of Chamberlayne Park School, Southampton. I would also like to thank: Professor Lou Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Loughborough, Professor Carl Parsons, Canterbury Christ Church University College, Lesley Thomas and Anne Taylor for their help and assistance, and Merle Davies, Robin Boyden, Barnaby Shaw and Karpana Somasundram, School Attendance Support Team from the DfES. Foreword: About this book The focus of this book is on helping schools to find short and long-term solutions for their non-attendance and truancy problems. Thus, Chapters 1 and 2 help to set the current national scene partially by providing relevant case studies. Chapters 3 to 6 concentrate on a whole host of recent short-term initiatives within schools. These ideas emanate from current work taking place within schools, LEAs and education action zones with which the author has been personally involved. The remainder of the book concentrates upon longer-term solutions and current issues which impinge upon establishing short and long-term solutions. Thus, Chapters 7 and 8 present an outline of two different types of long-term and more strategic ideas for schools to consider. Thereafter, the key issues discussed in the remaining chapters are truants and absentees, parents and parental-condoned absenteeism, alternative curriculum approaches, and mentoring. Re-integration strategies are considered at appropriate points throughout the book. The final chapter concludes with a series of recommendations on the best way forward in the continuing fight against truancy and other forms of non- attendance. Ideally, this book should be used alongside Truancy and Schools (Reid, 1999) and Tackling Truancy in Schools (Reid, 2000) both published by Routledge. In fact, this new book represents the third and final volume in a series on truancy previously referred to in the Epilogue on page 333 of Truancy and Schools. The provisional title has been changed from The Challenge of Truancy to Truancy: Short and Long-Term Solutions. This text is intended to be a helpful resource material for all those caring professionals involved in the process of combating non-attendance and truancy. These include head-teachers, senior staff, middle managers, form tutors, education welfare officers, education social workers, attendance support staff, educational psychologists, social workers, pupil referral unit staff, LEA administrators, magistrates and their clerks and, finally, and not least, parents whose role in the prevention of truancy is vital. Most of the case studies, examples and exemplars have been taken directly from schools, LEAs, projects and EAZs with whom the author has been personally involved. In some cases where it is generally about ‘good’ news the actual title of the institution involved has been named. However, in cases of high truancy schools or in order to protect individuals or their institutions, some fictional names of real people or their institutions have been used. Therefore, Seaside School represents a real school by the sea somewhere in south-west England. By contrast, the MAP Project at Mountain Ash School details are given in full as not only is the author acting as the external evaluator for the scheme, but because the school is rightly proud of its endeavour and achievements, and the Project Co-ordinator, Elaine Reynolds, has agreed to ‘field’ any subsequent interest from readers of the book. The chapters on the alternative curriculum and mentoring have been included because these two emergent fields are likely to become increasingly important in the near future. Equally, the chapter on parents and parental-condoned absenteeism is long overdue and utilises data gathered by the author in a variety of projects on truancy and persistent school absenteeism since 1977 and reworked to form the five categories now outlined. Much more work needs to be done to confirm the precise boundaries of these groups. However, Chapter 9 reminds us that parental-condoned absenteeism is far from being a simple and uniform problem. In fact, it is made up of a whole host of parental groups some of whom try very hard not to condone their children’s absence but are not very successful in achieving their aim. Finally, to help readers who are new to the subject of truancy, Chapter 1 describes some of the latest developments in the field. It tries to provide a potted introduction suitable for a reading of the rest of the book on where we are now in the current state of play on truancy and related attendance issues. Conversely, the final chapter summarises ideas for consideration by policy makers and practitioners on some of the best ways of reducing and combating truancy and other forms of absence based on the author’s thirty years’ experience in the field. The book is intended to be a good read as well as providing up-to-date and relevant case work and information about truancy. I hope you will enjoy it and find it helpful.