Improving School Attendance

Eric Blyth, Judith Milner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415178716
• eBook ISBN: 9781134683161
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Although pupil disaffection has been a major concern to professionals, policy makers and researchers for quite some time, recent professional books in the area tend to focus on behaviour and exclusion from schools. Despite considerable government funding in both LEA's and schools- to promote new measures to improve school attendance, non-attendance at school is a relatively neglected topic as far as serious researched-based literature is concerned. This book will be the first in several years concerned with non-attendance. Previously unpublished research material in the book will provide a multi-disciplinary evaluation of practice at LEA, whole school and individual levels.

1

THEORETICAL DEBATES AND LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK

Judith Milner and Eric Blyth

Introduction

The availability of free and compulsory education for its children, conventionally through the provision of state-funded schooling, is generally considered a hallmark of the development of a society. In the UK a system of such education has been in existence since the end of the nineteenth century, every child in Britain aged between 5 (4 in Northern Ireland) and 16 being required to receive ‘efficient, full-time education suitable to his age, ability, aptitude and to any special educational needs he may have’.

Free and compulsory education is recognised as a basic entitlement under international standards, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights. However, since different perceptions can be – and are – held about the various purposes of education and their relative importance, so too there are a range of views about the meaning and significance of absence from school. Consider, for example, the ‘mainstream’ view propounded by the Department for Education (now the Department for Education and Employment) that:

There is too much truancy from our schools. This undermines our educational system. It means that some schools are turning a blind eye, and some parents are not fulfilling their side of the bargain by meeting their legal obligation to see that their child attends school. Worse of all, it can lead to much unhappiness among school children themselves, as well as to greater problems for the community.

(DFE, 1992a: 5)

This assumes not only that levels of school attendance and absence are unambiguous measurable matters of ‘objective fact’, but that education (or, more specifically, ‘schooling’) is invariably a ‘good thing’ and absence is invariably not. In reality both the concept of nonattendance (and, in particular, perceptions which are, explicitly or implicitly, value judgements, such as ‘truancy’ and even ‘unauthorised absence’) and the presumed implications of non-attendance are social constructions.

The very fact of ‘compulsory’ education indicates that, without compulsion, those for whom education is designed would not necessarily avail themselves of it, or might be prevented by others from availing themselves of it. Such concerns have been evident from the early days of compulsory education in the United Kingdom as nineteenth-century bylaws requiring compulsory school attendance were resisted both by employers (often well represented among the local magistracy) anxious about losing a source of cheap labour and by parents anxious about losing the earnings of their working offspring, not to mention children themselves, who were not always enthusiastic about trading the dubious pleasures of the ‘dark satanic mill’ for the schoolroom with its emphasis on strict discipline and moral teaching. Indeed the value of education as a mechanism of social control (rather than as a means of self-improvement or of social mobility) was never far from the surface:

Education was desirable because it prevented juvenile delinquency and mendicancy, because it increased a labourer’s skill, productivity and earning power; because it prevented the growth of criminal classes; and because it led the workman to realise his true interests lay not in Communism or Chartism but in harmony with his employers.

(Finer, cited in Carlen et al., 1992: 19)

a perspective that has withstood the test of time:

In the long run, the objective must be to ensure that education ceases to be optional. All children of school age need to be in education. No children should be left to roam the streets during school hours.

(Social Exclusion Unit, 1998: 2)

Schooling, the family and the state

This perception of education, as intrinsically much more than a self-evidentially beneficent service made available, in the main, by the state rather than by private providers, is crucial for understanding the relationship between parents and their children and the state, a relationship which, in turn, is fundamental to understanding the phenomenon of non-attendance.

First, parents themselves have little real choice about whether to send their children to school. Second, by sending their children to school, parents transfer significant rights and authority over their children to individuals (teachers) acting on behalf of the state. This, together with the fact that children of school age spend a considerable proportion of their waking lives in school (15,000 hours in secondary education alone [Rutter et al., 1979]), provides schools with opportunities to monitor children for signs of neglect, abuse or other forms of ‘distress’ and trigger formal intervention in the lives of children and their families. Finally, schools may exert both positive and negative effects on their pupils.

Compulsory education and parental choice

UK law imposes a duty on parents to ensure that their children of compulsory school age receive appropriate education, whether through attendance at a state or independent school, or by other means (such as tuition at home), in which case the parents will need to provide evidence of the suitability of the education being provided. In practice, since few parents are in a position to make alternative arrangements outside of school for their children that would meet the standards required, the concept of compulsory education effectively means compulsory schooling. As a corollary, education authorities also have legal responsibilities to make appropriate education provision for children living in their area.

If a child is not registered at a school and the education authority establishes that he or she is not being properly educated ‘otherwise’ it may serve a notice requiring the child’s parent(s) to register the child at a school of their choosing. If the parents fail to respond to this notice within a given time, the child will be registered at a school chosen by the education authority. Parents who subsequently fail to secure the regular attendance of the child at the school at which they are registered and who fail to provide an acceptable defence are guilty of an offence.

In order to clarify the distinction between legitimate and illicit absence, the government introduced new categories of ‘authorised’ absence and ‘unauthorised’ absence in 1994 (DFE, 1994). Any absence that is not authorised by the school is, by definition, unauthorised and could place the parent(s) at risk of contravening their legal responsibilities. Despite regulations and guidance (DFE, 1994; SOED, 1995), there remains considerable discretion over which absences schools may authorise and, in English schools at least, continuing ambiguity about the categorisation of absences and the powers to authorise it (OFSTED, 1995a, 1995b). Furthermore, Hoyle (1998) claims there is an ‘implicit moral bias’ in the government’s categorisation of absence, citing the Department for Education’s (now Department for Education and Employment) selection of examples of unauthorised absence (a birthday) and authorised absence (graduation of an older sibling) (DFE, 1994: 7) – a distinction maintained by the Labour administration (DFEE, 1997a). Similarly, the classification of an educational visit as an authorised absence both assumes a narrow view of ‘education’ and diminishes the educational value of that activity.

In order to enforce school attendance either education authorities may prosecute parents under provisions of education legislation or they may act in respect of the child under childcare legislation. Despite some differences between the different jurisdictions, broadly similar measures exist throughout the United Kingdom. In exceptional circumstances nonattendance al8order under the provisions of the Children Act 1989 (Re: O, 1992). In addition to existing sanctions, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 gives courts a new power to impose a Parenting Order where a parent is convicted of failing to comply with a School Attendance Order or of failing to secure his/her child’s regular attendance at school. The government pressed ahead with the concept of parenting orders despite reservations expressed by leading independent childcare organisations such as The Children’s Society and Barnados that the compulsory element of a parenting order could exacerbate existing tensions within families and be counter-productive (Scanlon, 1998). A Parenting Order may last for up to 12 months. It has two elements: a requirement on the part of the parent to attend counselling or guidance sessions where help in dealing with their children will be provided, and a requirement to exercise control over the child’s behaviour, such as escorting the child to school or ensuring that he or she is home by a certain time of night and/or avoids contact with other disruptive children. Parental Orders will be piloted and evaluated in different parts of the country for an eighteen month period commencing in the autumn of 1998.

While, in practice, most parents have little choice about whether their children should attend school or not, education reforms introduced during the 1980s and 1990s made much of the concept of ‘parental choice’ in their children’s education, an essential aspect of the new ‘education market’. Parental choice found expression in two major directions. First, legislation was introduced to permit ‘open’ enrolment at schools, preventing artificial limits being placed on the numbers of pupils which could be registered at an individual school (and at the same time dismantling the traditional notion of a school serving the geographical area in which it is situated), providing parents with the right to ‘express a preference as to where they would like their children to go to school’, supplemented by information about schools (published performance data) upon which informed decisions could be made.

The development of real parental choice has been more limited than official rhetoric might suggest and it is important to note that parents have rights to ‘express’ a choice. They do not have an unequivocal legal right to exercise that choice. Proponents of the education market assume that ‘all are free and equal, differentiated only by their capacity to calculate their self-interest’ (Ranson, 1990: 15), so that any differences are explained and legitimated by pathologising as ‘bad’ parents those who do not make a choice or who make ‘poor’ choices. This analysis does not allow for the impact of structural (dis)advantage on the exercise of choice. Bourdieu and Passeron (1990), for example, recognise that, depending on their socioeconomic status, different individuals acquire varying degrees of ‘cultural capital’. Parents (the better educated and better off) with ‘cultural capital’, who have knowledge of schools, are able to interpret schools’ promotional material and performance data, are able to ‘work the system’ (using such strategies as making multiple applications, applying for scholarships, using appeals procedures, even moving house to be nearer a preferred school, or being able to provide or pay for transport to enable children to attend a preferred school), are able to present a positive image of themselves when negotiating with key gatekeepers, and are in a better position to maximise their choices than those with no or little ‘cultural capital’.

Moreover, the rhetoric of parental choice conceals increasing evidence that, in the deregulated education market, schools are increasingly choosing their pupils, those they consider will best contribute to the school’s image through some mechanism of selection (e.g. Audit Commission, 1996; Power et al., 1996). More secondary schools have reverted to some element of selection (the most efficient method of improving school performance data), while more schools are excluding ‘undesirable’ (i.e. high-cost/high-risk/lowachieving) pupils and indicating reluctance to accept pupils excluded from other schools – an increase at least in part fuelled by pressure on schools to demonstrate positive (popular) images. Rather than being seen as consumers of education with interests and rights to be recognised and respected, pupils are increasingly being seen as little more than the raw data of school performance statistics.

In essence, the education reforms of the 1980s and 1990s have promoted the re-emergence of a stratified state education system. Just as reforms have enhanced choice for some parents but not others, so too have they created ‘schools which can afford to turn away certain clients and other schools that must take any they can get’ (Ball, 1993: 8).

The second element of parental choice relates to determining via a secret ballot of parents whether the school attended by their children should remain under local authority control or ‘opt out’ of local authority control by securing grant-maintained status and receive its funding from central government. The Conservative government, which introduced the concept of grant-maintained schools, promoted this as a significant step for both parental choice and school autonomy:

The Government firmly believes that self-government is best for state schools.

(DFE, 1992a: 19)

Schools that have opted out have welcomed the new sense of ownership and independence. They can decide what they want to do and get things done without having to ask permission from the Town or County Hall. They are able to spend more in the classroom. Many schools become more popular with parents after opting out.

(DFE, 1992b: 2)

Indeed former Secretary of State for Education John Patten (1992) described grant-maintained status as the ‘natural organisational model for secondary education’. In practice, few parents seemed to agree, and only 1,158 out of a total of 24,000 schools in England and Wales (approximately 5 per cent of the total) had opted out between September 1988 when opt out was introduced and March 1997 (Hamilton and O’Reilly, 1997). Further, the opportunity to make such a choice was restricted to certain parents only, that is, once the decision to opt out had been taken, there were no provisions for a subsequent ballot to opt back in. Government ministers also seemed lukewarm regarding the notion of parental choice. In 1995 parents’ evident reluctance to more enthusiastically grasp the ‘opportunity’ of independence led the then Prime Minister John Major to announce proposals to dispense with parental ballots for all voluntary aided (i.e. church) schools (Charter, 1995), although this idea was abandoned in the face of combined opposition from Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops, while Kenneth Clarke, erstwhile Secretary of State for Education reportedly stated: ‘If I’d been Secretary of State in 1988, I would not have put in this balloting system….They [ballots] remain the biggest single obstacle in the way of moving to grantmaintained status’ (cited in Hamilton and O’Reilly, 1997). Despite the rhetoric, early research into grant-maintained schools in England indicated that there was little evidence of increased parental involvement in such schools, although grant-maintained status could enhance the power of the head teacher (Power et al., 1994, 1996).

Parents’ and teachers’ authority

The legal nature of the teacher’s authority over, and responsibility for, pupils in his or her charge was established in the 1890s and outlined by Lord Esher (then Master of the Rolls) as a duty ‘to take such care of his boys [sic] as a careful father would take care of his boys’ (Williams v. Eady, 1893). The extent of teachers’ responsibilities and their relationship with those of parents has been further elaborated over the years. The concept of in loco parentis implies that the teacher not only has authority but also a duty to care (Sim v. Rotherham Metropolitan BC and other actions, 1986: 405; Brazier, 1988). By the 1960s the test of the standard of care expected of teachers began to change to take account of the context of schooling, in particular the recognition that a teacher responsible for a class of 30 plus is not in the same position as a parent caring for a considerably smaller number of children at any one time and that teachers may possess knowledge not expected of the parent (Van Oppen v. Clerk to the Bedford Charity Trustees, 1989).

Delegation of parental authority to the teacher was implied, the teacher being subject only to the same legal limitations placed on parents, and where a parent disapproves of action taken by a teacher (usually over punishment), courts have determined that where a teacher has behaved ‘reasonably’ while acting in loco parentis, parents cannot over-rule their actions. In a 1938 ruling Judge Tucker stated:

when a parent sends his [sic] child to school, he delegates to teachers at the school the power to inflict reasonable and moderate punishment as required…and…he delegates to the teacher the taking of such steps as are necessary to maintain discipline with regard to the child committed to the teacher’s care.

(cited in Harris et al., 1992: 142)

While Brazier (1988) and the Elton Committee (DES, 1989a) also support the notion of the teacher’s independent authority to discipline children, this inevitably conflicts with the concept of increasing parental rights in education. Having said this, the eventual abolition of corporal punishment in state schools in the UK in 1987 was entirely due to successful action taken by parents who contended that the administration of corporal punishment in school against their express wishes represented a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (Campbell and Cosans v. United Kingdom, 1982). The complete abolition of corporal punishment in all maintained and independent schools and for children receiving nursery education will have to wait until late 1999, following implementation of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. Meanwhile, the government has issued guidance designed to clarify the use of ‘reasonable force’ by teachers to prevent the commission of a crime by a pupil or to prevent a pupil causing damage to property, injury to themselves or others, or disruption (DFEE, 1998).

The acquisition of authority by schools acting on behalf of the state has implications for their role...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Theoretical debates and legislative framework
• 2 Combating truancy: the Scottish approach
• 3 School attendance and the role of law in England and Wales
• 4 The relationship between delinquency and non-attendance at school
• 5 The effective collection and analysis of attendance data
• 6 The essential elements of an effective attendance policy
• 7 Strategies for improving school attendance
• 8 Proactive primary approaches to non-attendance
• 9 Raising expectations at Don Valley High School
• 10 Doing better: improving the educational experiences of looked-after children and young people
• 11 Student support groups
• References
• Index