Some schools in England are sending police to the homes of children who are persistently absent, or warning them their parents may go to prison if their attendance doesn’t improve, the Observer has learned.
Like the police have time for this....
But child psychologists and parent groups are warning that the push for full attendance is driving “heavy-handed” crackdowns at some schools, and ignores the issues that often lie behind school refusal, including mental health problems, unmet special educational needs, bereavement or the child being a carer.
Some might say it's not heavy-handed enough.
Ellie Costello, co-founder of Square Peg, a lobbying and support group for children who don’t fit into the conventional schools model, said: “Parents have told us about very strict schools actually forcing entry to their homes. Schools are turning up with community police. They are shouting up the stairs to highly anxious children, demanding they come into school now.”
And the youth are likely to treat 'community police' with the same disdain they treat real actual police on the street. he same disdain they treat real actual police on the street.
Oliver Conway, a child protection solicitor at London law firm Oliver Fisher, which is co-hosting a conference with Square Peg this week on the impact of prosecuting parents on attendance, said many poorer parents were unable to pay fines. He asked: “Why aren’t they giving these families proper mental health support and support from social services instead of trying to punish them?”
Shouldn't criticise, if they did that, how would people like you earn a living?
One “deeply vulnerable” woman came to him in great distress because the local authority was taking her to court for not sending her 14-year-old daughter into school. “Her daughter wasn’t going in because she was pregnant. She was involved in county lines [drug trafficking] and she was being sexually abused by a drug dealer,” he said.
This isn't an issue for a school to solve, it's an issue for the police!
3 comments:
The polis must have been very busy during The "two weeks to flatten the curve" Lockdown. Half of them forcing entry to homes of teachers, the other half ditto to homes of pupils and demanding they go to school.
Oh, I forgot, they were strolling on the beaches and open countryside looking for walkers and picnickers.
This showed the real importance of our declining edjucashun serfus, and a lot of parents and pupils saw this.
I was a selfish parent. I wanted the trouble-making kids to be constantly absent so that my childrens’ education wasn’t disrupted.
I’m sure that privately most teachers were grateful for the absence of the scrotes.
"This showed the real importance of our declining edjucashun serfus, and a lot of parents and pupils saw this."
And learned something important, for once!
"I’m sure that privately most teachers were grateful for the absence of the scrotes."
Indeed!
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