Truancy

What is Trauncy?

According to “Wikipedia” Truancy is:

“Truancy (also known as wagging or skiving) is a term widely used to describe an unexcused absence from compulsory schooling”

Now you may already know that, but did you know only schools, not parents, may authorise absence? The 1996 Education Act actually says this. According to the Audit Commission (1999), at least 40,000 of the 400,000 pupils absent from school each day are “truanting or being kept off school by their parents without permission”.

Causes of truancy

There are many reasons why young people “skive” from school, but in 1996 Kinder, Wakefield and Wilkin produced a report in which they interviewed 160 young people in Year 7 and above and the reasons they gave for truancy were:

1. Friends and peers encouraging truancy as a status-seeking activity or as a way of joining in or blending in, and sometimes teasing or goading one another into truanting.
2. Relationships with teachers, seen as lacking respect/fairness.
3. The content and delivery of the curriculum was seen as lacking irrelevant and uninteresting.
4. Family problems or the attitudes of parents.
5. Bullying.
6. The classroom setting, either because of teachers’ inability to control, or problems arising from the young persons own personality or learning abilities.

Whatever the causes, if you are having problems going to school, you need to sort them out as soon as possible. Your school will want to try to help resolve your problems and will often be very supportive, and may well want to arrange a meeting between you, your parent/carer and a member of staff at the school. You might be referred to Leicestershire County Council’s Education Welfare Office for help and support if it is thought that they could provide some assistance.