Down the Bog

Being married for the second time I have three grown-up daughters from my first marriage. The youngest one is still at school (just!) and I’m grateful that they’ve never been a problem in getting to school. In actual fact although like any parent I’ll have had my moans and groans about them they’ve really been very good children that have grown up into great adults. I’ve a lot to be proud of.

So I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a child who’s a real handful and especially a teenager that refuses to go to school. It presents a real problem for the school and parents because of the legal responsibility for children to attend school and of course because successful attendance and participation in school is of vital importance to prepare for adult life.

Dawn Joyce, a woman in the UK has just been jailed for two weeks because of her daughter’s continued failure to attend school. Jailing a parent involved in this kind of situation is considered the last resort after everything else has been tried but honestly, what can such a thing achieve? Is this going to make the daughter suddenly repent and see the error of her ways? It might do I suppose but if it doesn’t then what next? For a youngster to consistently miss so much school suggests deep seated problems that may well prove to be insurmountable but is a jail term for the Mum going to fix it?

A couple of a weeks ago I listened to a debate on the radio about overcrowding in UK prisons because increasingly offenders are being given jail terms. There are limited places so it’s suggested that alternative sentences need to be found for offenders who are not a threat to the public and that makes sense to me. Maybe those that aren’t a threat should be forced to stay at home in the evenings and overnight while during the day have community service that compels them to physically work hard. It’s a thought.

However, sending parents to jail who’s children play truant isn’t going to ease the overcrowding problem.

I don’t know the answer in getting persistent truants to school. I remember kids at my school that often failed to turn up because it’s an age old problem and maybe there will always be children that will grow up to have miserable adult lives because of their lack of application in attending school. On the hand maybe they go on to have very successful lives.

But in a country such as the UK where teenagers as young as fourteen can go on the contraceptive pill without their parents knowing (patient confidentiality and all that) then maybe those same kids have to accept full responsibilty for failure to attend school and the legal consequences such as they are.

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