Not one of the 100 families issued with a final warning to pay their outstanding truancy fines or face legal action has complied with the order, The Sunday Times of Malta has learnt.
The situation, however, has prompted the government to review the system and move away from punishing parents who may need help.
Last January this newspaper reported that the Attorney General had sent a letter of final notice to 100 families who had repeatedly ignored fines for not sending their children to school. The letter had instructed them to settle their dues or be taken to court.
However, a spokesman for the Office of the Prime Minister yesterday confirmed that, seven months later, none of the families had complied.
The spokesman said Justice Minister Owen Bonnici and Education Minister Evarist Bartolo had teamed up to draft legislative reform which would approach the problem in a similar way from the same perspective as recent drug reform laws, which softened the authorities’ approach to the personal use of certain substances.
“This is a social problem more than a criminal one. We could just continue punishing these parents, but this system isn’t working. Ultimately, punishing the parents is also punishing the children,” he said.
Parents of truant children can be fined as much as €2.33 for each day their child misses school without a valid reason. Failing to pay is considered a criminal offence under the Education Act.
Punishing parents is punishing children
Despite this, many of the fines are habitually shrugged off by parents, as authorities tasked with taking legal steps against them often fail to do so.
Eighty per cent of the citations issued over the past 10 years have been ignored, with around €1.4 million still uncollected at the end of last year. The spokesman said that a “social reform” programme was being developed with the aim of addressing truancy at the root cause.
“We have to keep in mind that in the vast majority of cases there are complex social and even financial issues that need to be addressed. This could be done in a variety of ways including offering support and parenting assistance,” the spokesman said.
The reform seems to tally with the results of a recent study by the Education Directorate which found that the leading causes behind truancy were financial troubles at home and poor parenting skills.
The government’s new ap-proach is markedly different, however, from the position it previously adopted.
Last year, it said it would adopt a hard line against parents who failed to educate their children, and added that it was considering increasing fines as well as deducting some €400 in annual social benefits from non-compliant parents.
Mr Bartolo said the government would “no longer accept a situation where parents did not send their children to school”.
Some 1,140 primary and secondary school students missed one-fifth of their school days in the last scholastic year. About 900 of them were meant to be preparing for their O level examinations.