Truancy and Schools

Ken Reid

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134628070
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

At present about one million pupils truant from their schools on a daily basis and this book examines why they do it. The numerous reasons for truanting discussed are: * disadvantageous home backgrounds * problems with settling in socially at school * poor performance in school * experiencing bullying in school * not coping with the transition from primary to secondary schooling. This book focuses on the social, psychological and educational causes of truancy. It examines recent research and gives many examples of good practice while also detailing the latest solutions for tackling this problem. The text is for teachers, heads of year and department heads, senior school managers, education welfare officers, social workers, educational psychologists, parents and all those with an interest in educational policy and practice.

1 The consequences of truancy

‘Truancy’ is a term which is frequently misused; it can be applied both generically and have local meaning. In different parts of Great Britain, truancy is known amongst other things as ‘skipping off’, ‘mitching’, ‘dodging’, ‘skiving’, ‘bunking-off’ and ‘going missing’. In popular English literature, truancy is sometimes reported as a natural, impish act of escapism, which is likely to take place at some stage during the normal development of children. Truancy is often, quite rightly, associated with early or later adolescence.

Truancy, as a term, is perversely often associated with fun. That is, it is considered by some to be more fun to be outside a school avoiding formal lessons and in theory doing what you like rather than sitting inside a classroom and ‘learning’. This concept is the theme of Webster’s famous painting of The Truant’ in the nineteenth century which depicts two absconders standing, elated, outside their small school-room nervously peering in at the activities inside.

The reality of truancy is very different. Many truants often engage in meaningless activity while away from school. Some are even bored, finding it difficult to while away their time. In fact, if you talk to many truants, they will privately admit that if they had their time over again they would never start truanting. For many persistent cases, the truants have become victims of their own misguided practice. Not only do a lot of truants recognise the error and foolishness of their ways, but they also appreciate that they are long-term victims and losers in life. Many truants—even hardened cases—deep down would like a second opportunity, which is why schools specialising in second chances for disaffected pupils offer one of the best long-term opportunities for eradicating and overcoming the phenomenon and its longer-term consequences. In 1998, the Labour Government began to encourage second opportunities for youngsters who are failing at school or who left school without formal qualifications. Many of these targeted school failures were truants. Hardened by their own experiences when in school, and since leaving school, these young adults are often more receptive to second chance opportunities.

Moreover, there is increasing and worrying evidence that some truants spend their time engaging in fringe activities such as drug taking, prostitution, joyriding, violence, watching video nasties and participating in organised crime. For example, in Liverpool, it has been reported that several truants were embroiled in organised theft from local stores co-ordinated by a ‘Mr Big’. In Glasgow, a group of girls were used to create an underage prostitution ring organised and protected by adult minders. In Swansea, a group of truants provided videos, televisions and other electrical items for sale to a second hand shop.

During the 1950s and mid-1960s, it was reported that truancy was ‘an isolated activity’ undertaken by most children ‘on their own’. These days, the evidence is that much more truancy is organised, pre-planned and takes place in groups. One estimate is that group truancy accounts for roughly 70 to 80 per cent of cases; the remainder of truants spending their time on their own. The evidence also shows significant differences between boy and girl truant groups in how they spend their time. Girl groups of truants often focus their activities within a person’s home or in town centres. Male truants will also spend time in groups in town. They are however, more often to be found outdoors—perhaps fishing, playing football, or hiding away out of sight in order to smoke and/or drink alcohol. Girl truancy groups, too, also contain a high proportion of smokers.

Boredom, and long bouts of it, is a natural consequence of truancy. This begs the question—Why do they do it? In one of my own studies of truants, I found Paul (see Chapter 2), a 13-year-old boy, spending his time ‘skinning mice’ in his bedroom. When I asked him whether attending school was worse than skinning mice, he looked nonplussed before adding that he had ‘no choice’. Case studies of truants are littered with such sad stories.

Jane is also thirteen. She rarely attends school. When she does, she takes little interest in her lessons. Quite regularly, she leaves home intending to go to school before changing her mind on the way. Her mother is desperate for help. At home, Jane has become impossible to control. She uses the house to eat, sleep and play loud music. Most of the time she spends in the streets; in town during the day, on the estate in the evenings.

Jane’s mother feels trapped. She gets little help from the school which she regards as being generally unsympathetic. From time to time she gets a letter or receives a visit from the local ‘boardy man’. He leaves her feeling low, reminding her of her own days at school when she herself was a truant. Her social worker is generally more helpful but, in truth, provides little comfort or tangible hope for either change or success. Life for Jane and her mother is tough and the longer-term outlook is even bleaker.

Yet Jane is not alone. In fact, in Britain today, around one million pupils miss school daily. Why?

The specific causes for truancy vary from survey to survey, region to region; but a few facts stand out. The main reason why children truant is that they do not like school. However, findings on the educational causes of truancy vary from school to school. In Jane’s case, she began truanting at the age of nine, while at primary school. She found she couldn’t get on with her classmates and didn’t like her class teacher. Four years later, Jane finds she is so far behind with her school work that she is completely out of her depth. She is ‘hopeless’ at maths, ‘hates’ physical education, ‘loathes’ RE, ‘can’t understand French or science’ and is ‘useless’ at history and geography. She says she ‘likes’ English but can’t read aloud in class, is shy and ‘finds difficulty putting sentences together’ while ‘my spelling is worse than hopeless’.

Like so many truants, Jane is trapped within a cycle based on poverty, deprivation, unfulfilled need and ignorance. By truanting, Jane is compounding her own limitations and destroying any possibility for her own upward social mobility.

In other surveys, one of the main reasons for missing school is bullying. However, while bullying can be the most significant cause for truancy in one school, it will not even rate a mention in another, showing that there is no single, universal cause for the truancy phenomenon. For example, in different school surveys, the main reported categories given for truancy have included: ‘school is boring’; ‘homework not completed’; ‘exam avoidance’; ‘dislike of a teacher’ or ‘a subject’; ‘being forced to wear school uniform’; ‘being shouted at in class’; ‘not liking the other kids in my class’; ‘feeling generally fed up at school’. These surveys suggest that the curriculum, poor teaching, unsatisfactory teacher-pupil relationships and aspects related to peer group relationships are four of the main reasons for truancy in most schools.

Whatever the precise causes, the consequences of truancy are enormous. Consider a few simple facts. Forty per cent of all street robberies in London, and a third of car thefts, 25 per cent of burglaries and 20 per cent of criminal damage were committed by 10- to 16-year-olds in 1997 and were blamed on truants. Truancy is the greatest single predictor of juvenile and adult crime and of adult psychiatric problems. Two thirds of young offenders begin their criminal activities while truanting. Truancy is also closely linked to a wide range of other difficulties in adult life including: the inability to settle into the routine of work and/or marriage; frequent job changes; isolationism; pathological disorders; poverty; higher separation and divorce rates; living upon income support; illiteracy; depression; temper tantrums; and involvement with social workers and the social services. Truancy is also associated with a significantly higher likelihood of becoming a teenage parent and of being unemployed or homeless in later life. Truancy has immediate and longer-term consequences throughout all stages of adult life. Males who truant are more likely to marry girls who played truant at a similar age at school. Truant families’ then tend to have sons or daughters who also play truant, thereby perpetuating a truancy syndrome into the next generation, rather like Jane.

The long-term economic consequences for Britain, therefore, are equally large. It has been estimated that a high proportion of truants spend much of their adult lives totally or partially dependent upon the social services in one form or another of state aid. Therefore, in theory, if truancy is either curtailed or eliminated, and potential truants achieve success while at school, millions of pounds could literally be wiped from the long-term cost of the social services’ budget, potentially saving billions over the years at a stroke. Yet, achieving this goal is not easy. Why? It is worth remembering research shows that rates of absenteeism and truancy from school have remained constant since 1870. In fact, some more recent pupil-based surveys are beginning to suggest significant increases in the number of recorded truants. This appears to be particularly true since the introduction of the National Curriculum, suggesting that not all subjects have equal meaning and value to less able pupils.

Despite considerable effort, no overwhelming political, social or educational solution has ever been found, which indicates that there is no simple or single panacea for success. In 1998, the Government introduced revised guidelines and targets for schools which now mean that each school has to reduce its own rate of truancy by one third by the year 2002. OFSTED is expected to formally report on any school following an Inspection whose rate of attendance fell below 90 per cent. So, despite all previous endeavours, truancy continues to be a major social, educational and economic problem.

And the economic costs do not only begin in adult life. One school in the Midlands, for example, has built an eight-foot perimeter fence to keep in its truants and specific lesson absentees. Considerable numbers of schools also now use security guards to patrol school gates and adjacent boundaries to keep in potential truants. At one school in Manchester, the cost of this exercise is equivalent to two full-time experienced teachers and the money is taken from the school’s budget.

Truancy has other connotations. Legally, truancy is a problem because of the consequences for parents who break their statutory duties by failing to ensure their children receive a suitable full-time education. Educationally, truancy is a source of concern because non-attenders generally tend to fall behind in their work, and their attitude (and behaviour in the case of disruptive truants) affects other pupils and teachers, as well as themselves. In recent OFSTED inspections, school failure is frequently linked to those schools that have large numbers of pupils who truant and behave badly. Psychologically, truancy is symptomatic of pupils who are insecure, have low academic and general levels of self-esteem, and/or have personality disorders. These conditions may foreshadow more serious conditions in later adolescence and adult life. Sociologically, truancy is known to be linked with multiple adverse home conditions, low social class and deprivation. Institutionally, truancy suggests disaffection from school.

Truancy is not a form of behaviour which is generally condoned by the general public. The police recognise the strong link between truancy and juvenile and adult crime. Shopkeepers fear truants because they know that they often lose most of their stolen stock to them. Equally, many teachers have little sympathy with truants. As professionals primarily concerned with imparting knowledge, they tend to feel that good attendance is essential if pupils are to make satisfactory progress. Moreover, teachers are busy people. Their workloads and the organisation of schools ensure that very few of them have the time to know a great deal about those individual pupils who manifest their displeasure with school—and them—by truanting. In turn, this breakdown in communication between teachers and truants makes implementing successful re-integration strategies immensely more difficult. In fact, such is the pressure on today’s teachers, that some staff are delighted at the prospect of instructing fewer pupils—especially since those who can be troublesome or backward, require extra attention in class or behave badly.

Yes, teachers can be cynical, but they are also realistic. They tend to feel that their prime duty and responsibility is to regular attenders, higher achievers, those who conform, and who wish to do well at school. Regular attendance is the best barometer of this conformist attitude. Consequently, in some schools, even enlightened schools, innovative policies for dealing with truants have failed. Why?

First, truancy is a multi-causal problem. Second, every truant is unique. Third, many teachers have little understanding or training about truancy. Neither for that matter have many social workers, education welfare officers, educational psychologists or professionals in other forms of childcare or support, including magistrates. Fourth, there are few easy solutions. Increasingly, there are a lot of good ideas about, some having worked better than others. But most of these are local initiatives. There are few national guidelines, and the dissemination of good practice is at best patchy.

It is for all the above reasons that this book for schools and caring professionals has been prepared. It is to be hoped that as professionals gain more insight and understanding into the nature, causes, consequences and solutions, truancy will start to be controlled, and, eventually, defeated. After all, truancy is a phenomenon which is restricted to a few, comparatively successful countries, more especially the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australasia, and parts of Europe and Scandinavia. It is virtually unknown in other parts of the world, especially those where educational opportunities are limited.

The remainder of this book will focus on the social, psychological and educational causes of truancy. It will go on to consider how schools can prevent, tackle and combat truancy and provide numerous examples of good practice based on empirical and professional evidence undertaken by Government agencies, OFSTED, researchers, teachers, administrators, education welfare officers and education social workers. Specific chapters will focus on the role of whole school policies, LEA guidelines, parents, OFSTED and the education welfare service. Throughout all the remaining 14 chapters, case study exemplars are used at appropriate points, as are good practice guidelines and summaries of findings in traditional text or tabular format. But, first, we will begin by considering the extent and various types of truancy.

2 Types of truants and incidence

Categories of truants

Based on my own previous research (Reid 1985), three categories of truants have been found to emerge, each of which can be easily identified. The usage of these categories can be especially helpful as we develop our knowledge of successful treatment strategies—it is highly likely that in the future we will be able to propose different re-integration strategies for each of them.

This possibility is presently being handicapped by a lack of research. Soon, we will probably discover that there are personality differences between each of the three categories of truant. The result of tightening these constructs will eventually open up numerous possibilities for schools and social workers. We should be able, for example, to be in a position to supply schools with proformas and/or guidelines to enable them to distinguish easily between different kinds of truants alongside appropriate re-integration or other forms of ‘treatment’/remedial strategies.

As each truant is unique, a victim of his or her social, psychological, familial and educational circumstances, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to develop re-integration strategies to the point that will satisfy every individual set of circumstances. However, it is extremely probable that the three categories can be sufficiently refined and amended to highlight possible different treatment approaches by group for the different caring professionals who interact with truants. These include teachers, education welfare officers, educational psychologists, social workers and educational social workers, childcare agencies, psychiatrists and, possibly, the police.

The traditional or typical truant

The traditional or typical truant follows the earlier description of the truant offered by Tyerman (1968). Thus, traditional truants tend to be isolates who come from an unsupportive home background, possibly with a tendency to be shy. It is likely that they will have a low self-concept, be introverted, and be the victim of their social circumstances. By nature, traditional truants will be pleasant when spoken to and liable to acquiesce rather than to search for confrontation. They may well be aware of their own social and educational limitations and so seek compensation by insulating themselves from the unrewarding stimuli at school—just like Billy Casper in Kes.

The psychological truant

The psychological truant could be the school phobic (school refusal) case but more often than this psychological truants miss school for psychological or psychological-related factors such as illness, psychosomatic complaints, laziness, a fear of attending school for any reason (such as dislike of a teacher, a lesson, an impending confrontation or fear of bullying) or because of other physical or temperamental disadvantages, like handicaps or tantrums. Psychological truants probably need specialist counselling or skilled as well as empathetic pastoral care to help them to overcome their justified or irrational fears or prejudices.

The institutional truant

Institutional truants miss school purely for educational reasons usually related to their school. Unlike traditional truants, they may be extroverts, engage in confrontation and, indeed, may even remain on the school premises although out of lessons. Institutional truants are more likely to indulge in ‘on the spur of the moment’ absences from lessons and to be selective about days or lessons to miss. They often have a higher self-concept than traditional truants and have quite large numbers of friends. Institutional truants may even be the leaders of groups of absentees, have a complete disregard for authority, and be unconcerned about the outcome of any punitive measures taken against them. Like traditional truants, they are likely to come from deprived and/or unsupportive home backgrounds. It is probable that some institutional truants will have ‘matured’ on a diet of squabbles at home, in their immediate neighbourhood and in their classrooms.

The generic truant

Technically, there is a fourth category of truant. The generic truant is one who misses school for a variety of reasons at different times. Therefore, at the age of eleven, he or she may be a traditional truant whereas, by the age of fourteen, could have become either a psychological or institutional truant. Some truants manifest symptoms from all three categories because of the make-up of their social, psychological and educational backgrounds. For example, a very high proportion of truants have low academic self-concepts, are in the low to middle ability range, have unfavourable home backgrounds and a host of related personal problems in and out of school.

Case studies: Paul, Claire and Wayne

Paul, Claire and Wayne are three truants from the same form at a comprehensive school in South Wales. Despite being members of the same form group, they have little else in common apart from their socio-economic backgrounds. They all come from deprived socio-economic groups and live on the same council estate approximately two miles from the school. Paul is the son of a single parent. Claire is the only child within her family unit. Wayne comes from a large family; he is the third of four boys and has two younger sisters. Two of his elder brothers previously attended the same school where they were notorious truants.

Before this, Paul, Claire and Wayne had attended the same primary school and been in the same class. Despite this, they had never been friends. Paul and Claire were ‘afraid’ of Wayne. Paul stated that he ‘rarely saw’ Wayne and when he did he ‘kept out of his way’.

Claire believed Wayne to be one of the ringleaders behind her persecution at school. She said he always called her ‘carrot top’ or worse and laughed at her when she ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Boxes
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• 1: The consequences of truancy
• 2: Types of truants and incidence
• 3: Types of truancy
• 4: Causes of truancy: social perspectives
• 5: Causes of truancy: psychological indices
• 6: Educational causes of truancy
• 7: Government initiatives
• 8: School-based initiatives
• 9: Whole-school approaches to reducing truancy
• 10: Improving school attendance: school-based review
• 11: Teachers, teaching and truancy
• 12: An internal and an external solution: records of achievement and work placement schemes
• 13: OFSTED: guidelines on attendance and behaviour
• 14: Parents and truancy
• 15: Education welfare service
• 16: Epilogue
• Bibliography