The tools used by government policies to deal with truancy do not seem to be working. One such method is more rigorous enforcement of provisions in the Education Act that impose fines on parents of habitually truant students and defining failure to pay such fines as ‘a criminal offence’.
When those responsible for improving the educational achievement of young students look at deteriorating truancy statistics records they often resort to issuing instructions to school heads to enforce more discipline and instil the fear of God in students and their parents about the consequences of missing school. Political leaders eager to see their short-term objectives achieved look at statistical records improvement on education as a forecast of their policies being applauded by the electorate.
Educators who deal with the day-to-day realities of preparing young people for the real world of work by teaching them the skills they would need to find their right place in society often give up in desperation as they feel unsupported when trying to make their school a pleasant place where students want to be.
The scale of the problem of truancy in Malta, not unlike that in many countries, is significant. A UK education researcher at Cardiff University, Philippa James, states: “The more schools improve methods of detecting truancy, the more children work out better methods of deception.” More worryingly she claims that “many of the assumptions that underpin government policy on school absenteeism are false”.
There seems to be little doubt that one of the causes of truancy is related to poverty. Disadvantaged families have to struggle financially and this could keep children out of school. It is not unheard of, for instance, that some teenagers miss school to care for younger siblings or stay up late because they are unsupervised in the evenings when both parents are on the job. Others are missing class because they themselves are working, often in the black economy.
Unless educational policies on preventing truancy stress the importance of educators and parents getting together to make it possible for young people from disadvantaged families to attend school regularly, truancy in the more disadvantaged sectors of our society will continue to be endemic.
The Malta Union of Teachers is right to fret about the consequence of a culture that exists in our schools based on ‘going to school to avoid fines’. They rightly argue that this is a recipe for failure.
The teachers’ union is also correct to complain that the government is expecting miracles from educators when it fails to provide a necessary legal framework to tackle the problem of re-integrating long-term truants to school life after years of truancy.
Negative policies breed negative reactions. Heads of school have to deal with a section of students who do their utmost to get expelled or suspended because they still refuse to be anywhere near mainstream classes.
The tools that can deal effectively with habitual truancy must rely on positive motivators. Very often, truancy is a response to factors within the school.
Many students in the Cardiff University research complained that some teachers failed to engage them and that their lessons were boring. These students did not necessarily come from disadvantaged families.
We need to abandon the obsession with statistics and look for the reasons of truancy so that, rather than walk away from school, students would acquire the skills to talk through problems and make a positive change in their long-term educational prospects.