Reasons underlying school truancy

By Adam Purver
BBC series producer, Bunking Off

Truanting children are often with parents

Around 50,000 children in England skip school every day.

The reasons can be varied and complex, from bullying to life-threatening illness and family breakdown.

And sometimes there is no apparent reason.

Ten-year-old Ashleigh hates going to school - and her mum Karen faces a daily battle to get her there.

On a typical morning, Karen runs down the road after her daughter and finally catches up with her.

There is a scuffle and Ashleigh stumbles to the ground in floods of tears.

After being pulled back up on to her feet, Ashleigh lashes out at a wheelie bin, sending its contents flying across the road.

Karen and Ashleigh's father, Steve, finally force their daughter inside their house and drive her to school, still struggling and sobbing.

Ashleigh regularly refuses to go to school and sometimes when her parents get her there, she runs away.

Prosecution

Karen says she has no idea why her daughter refuses to go. She is not being bullied and does not have any particular problems with lessons.

Yet, in line with the government's drive to hold parents directly responsible for their child's truancy, Karen and her partner Steve are facing prosecution by Bolton Education Authority.

"The law says I have to get my child to school. But could you honestly tell me that you could get her to school with everything I'm putting up with?

"They don't look at the mental side of what the parents are coping with," said Karen.

Buying doughnuts

Winning the war against truancy has been a key priority for the government over the past eight years.

It has ploughed �885m into a raft of initiatives. But the numbers skipping school remain obstinately high.

Among the government initiatives are truancy patrols which have taken place in a number of towns.

Education welfare officers are continually surprised at the number of children - around half of those stopped in the streets - who are with their parents or out of school with the full knowledge of their parents.

One child recently found by a patrol had left school mid-morning to meet his father and buy some doughnuts.

But many others are out of school without their parents' knowledge.

Parent trouble

A recent operation in the Lancashire town of Bury picked up 15-year-old Dale.

He had been skipping school for the past six weeks - but the family problems behind his truancy were not immediately clear.

Dale was just months away from taking GCSE exams and he was summoned to a special meeting at school with his mother, who is a single parent and has three other children.

Dale's father had left home when his mother was pregnant with him.

Although Dale had kept in regular contact with his father, the school meeting discovered that he was reeling from his dad's decision to go back on a promise to allow him to move in with him and start a new life.

It was this broken promise which the school felt might have triggered Dale's truanting.

Crisis

With the threat of prosecution hanging over his mother's head, Dale returned to school and passed his mock GCSE exams.

But then he hit crisis point. After weeks of arguments with his mum about his unruly behaviour, she kicked him out of the house.

What at first appeared as just a problem of truancy had escalated and just days before his 16th birthday, Dale found himself homeless and with no money.

For the education welfare officers looking after Dale and thousands like him, it is a desperate battle not only to help the children return to school but also to get their lives back on track.

Bunking Off is on BBC One at 2235BST on Tuesdays until 23 August.