Truancy needs horse sense not more severe punishments

With reference to children who play truant, during my time as a headteacher I was asked by my Local Education Authority to admit a 14-year-old boy who, during the three years he had been in secondary schools had played truant three or four days in every week.

I agreed to their request and went to see him at his home. I told him that he only needed to turn up every morning and stay in school for an hour or so. He accepted my offer. For the next two weeks he turned up every day and stayed for one or two hours. I felt that we had made a good start!

Then one Sunday I was driving along a country lane when I saw the boy walking along leading a horse. I stopped the car, went over to him and asked him if it was his horse. When he replied “yes” I asked him if the reason he had been staying away from school was so that he could be with his horse.

“Yes”, he said.’

“Well, why on earth didn’t you tell people?” I asked. “Nobody asked,” was his reply!

I told him that if he wanted he could bring his horse to school every day and tether it on the playing field. He accepted the offer, and from that day until the day he left school his attendance was 100 per cent.

Unfortunately, not all cases of truancy are so easy to resolve.

Some very young children develop a deep anxiety about going to school because they are afraid of something bad happening to their mother while they are not with them. Other children suffer from low self-esteem or shyness and cannot tolerate the noise and bustle of crowded classrooms and playgrounds. Many teenagers find sitting in a classroom stressful because they don’t understand the lessons.

The competitive nature of school life causes many children to develop a feeling that they are hopeless. Playing truant gives them the opportunity to excel at things they know they are good at – riding a bicycle for instance.

Tightening rules, dishing out severe punishments and sending parents to prison will have no effect on these children. What the children need is understanding and compassion.

These children will also be helped by the teachers forming a close relationship with their parents. Most importantly, school life should be made less competitive, less challenging and more relaxed. Making the school curriculum more exciting, more meaningful and more related to the aptitudes and interests of the individual child would also help to make going to school more enjoyable and more worthwhile.