Schools in England send police to homes of absent pupils with threats to jail their parents
https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/19/schools-england-police-homes-absent-pupils
by Codydoc4
Schools in England send police to homes of absent pupils with threats to jail their parents
https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/19/schools-england-police-homes-absent-pupils
by Codydoc4
25 comments
Schools have got too much power and are overreaching into family life.
Well I’m sure that would only be a nurturing and stabilising development for an absentee child…
Seems like a great use of already overstretched police resources.
Police doing what a social care system should be set up to do.
Given that the jails are over flowing already this may not be the deterrent that they hope for.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-69014154
Police will go threaten parents yet won’t even turn up when my van gets broken into in the middle of the night, all my tools get stolen and my way of paying my mortgage is gone.
Perhaps I’ll have to keep my son out of school for a few weeks next time I get robbed, the police might actually turn up then.
And what are they going to do with all these kids when their parents are in jail?
And here I am with my kids’ school striking for multiple days a week. Never, ever, ever going to take shit from them about any planned absence my kids might need (usually 99% attendance from us btw).
If the kids won’t go after everything else has been tried this seems a logical step
This is a civil issue and should be dealt with by the local authority. Waste of police resources unless something else is happening at home.
I suffer from an anxiety disorder, for two years (Y9-Y11) something snapped and I struggled with attendance through to leaving. I just couldn’t sit in a classroom with my peers without breaking down.
I was seen by CAMHS who told my parents I was faking it. I returned to school and they didn’t know what to do with me, so shoved me in isolation until leaving.
IDK about you, but spending two years in isolation feels like it’s very much a problem rather than ‘faking it’.
Post-16 College offered pastoral support and managed to get a handle on it (staff were awesome). This is where the government should be focusing, addressing the root cause.
My parents weren’t threatened but I can guarantee this wouldn’t have improved the situation. People going through this do not think rationally.
The govt should focus on the parents of children who are SERIALLY absent. These are the parents who can’t be arsed getting their kids ready and bringing them into school. This is what the original legislation of fining parents was brought in for.
Waste of Police resources. I don’t think for a minute most Poloce forces would agree to do this.
I don’t believe it.
The article mentions the police a couple of times, but just a vague idea from someone saying this happens. It’s just rumours. No details on these visits and no verification.
If police go around to a house, it is for other reasons, not this.
Put simply: schools don’t have the authority to tell the police what to do.
The DfE states in the article that it tells schools to take a support first model and to work closely with families to provide support.
The rest of the article gives a list of reasons why kids are being absent and most of them relate to failings of public services. Mental health issues, lack of disability accommodations, children acting as carers, the list goes on.
So, after gutting the services that keep kids healthy and happy, the government then sets schools an impossible target with extremely high pressure to deliver, with no extra funding to do it, and when they resort to drastic measures, the DfE gets to smile and shrug and say “Well we never told them to do THAT!”.
Never forget who the real villains are.
I’ve had this problem with my son for ages. It’s been blamed on my parenting with not much help.
It started in junior school where he would refuse to walk.
I would take him to school in a wheelchair.
I was told I couldn’t do that anymore and had to make him walk.
He would walk slowly. It would take him 2 hours to walk a 10-15 min walk.
I went back to the wheelchair again and got told to stop.
His anxiety ramped up. Eventually he refused point blank.
School told me to “do what’s necessary to get him to school”
I put him in a wheelchair screaming and push him ti school screaming.
School gets a report and they report me because I took him to school screaming.
Fast forward secondary school we get 2 weeks support where my son gets a lift to school. He complies. 2 week support stops. He refuses. Takes ages to get out the house.
A few times his phone is dropped off at school. It takes him a month to collect it.
I’m told that I have to get him to school but I can’t force him, shout at him, physically dress him, physically force him out of bed. I can only take his stuff which isn’t effective. I’m now disabled and have mobility problems.
He is small man sized so picking him up and physically moving him is impossible. He knows no one can touch him.
He wants to go to school but he says he can’t.
We can’t even get the police to go visit a family we haven’t heard from since January. When we go, there is no answer.
You- someone stalking your property while your out for several weeks, have cctv proof of it,
Police- “until they do something wrong then we’ll get involved”
You- kids gone truant not attending school
Police-knocks at your door “Get your kid back to school £800 fine…….”
Make perfect sense…….
who comes up with this shit, AI?…..
such lack of common sense considering majoirty of parents want to take their kids on holiday when they aren’t getting extorted by holiday companies….. just a Huge observation….
So police have time for policing absent students but seemingly not burglaries and violent crime? Sounds about where we are.
A girl I knew decided to run away from home at 14 and move in with her piece of shit older boyfriend and stopped going to school.
Her mum got multiple fines and threats of court. Not once did any authority do anything to help get her daughter home. It’s all well and good punishing people but what’s the point of you can’t get any help to fix things.
I will actually defend this.
Kids not attending school can be a serious safeguarding issue. It could be the children are elsewhere, parents are non involved or other serious issues.
It takes a lot for a school to take parents to court. Only when all other courses have been exhausted will this happen.
In 15 years in education I have only heard of this happening once.
Considering the police are constantly saying they’re over stretched and have a lack of resources, which is the reason they say why they don’t even turn up to most burglaries anymore. This seems like a huge waste of resources
I don’t see that the article matches the headline at all.
“…a school attendance officer, or a council welfare officer, or “sometimes the police” turned up and insisted on talking to the child.”
So the police only occasionally go, and it’s likely only when the others aren’t available. Probably because services have been cut to the point where no one else can check on the student but the police. There’s a bit about how ‘many parents’ have claimed there are threats of jail, but no data, no figures or facts. The schools aren’t actually calling the police and telling them to threaten people with prison.
Schools have to report unexplained and persistent absences up to authorities, it’s required under safeguarding. Failing to manage safeguarding is an immediate fail from Ofsted. And the school can’t send teachers around the streets looking for them ffs.
If the school just ignored absent students and it turns out one had been kidnapped or was being abused and no one seemed to think it worth checking out, all hell would come down on them, rightly so.
My friend took her kids on a week holiday, when they returned one of the kids got sick and stayed 1 more week at home. She did notify and call the school about it. They still callled cps about it and they had a visit. This country is fucked up.
I’m a teacher and work specifically in safeguarding.
Schools can’t instruct the police and I’ve never heard of schools reporting families to the police for non-attendance. Schools can’t ’send the police’ anywhere.
*But* schools regularly have to request welfare checks if a child hasn’t been seen and if parents aren’t communicating with the school. Schools are *legally obliged* to do this.
If a school has concerns around persistent absence/lack of communication from home, they’ll inform the local MASH (Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub) team.