[attach id=311896 size="medium"]Cospicua is particularly prone to school absenteeism. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier[/attach]

Withholding children’s allowance could be one way of tackling “widespread” truancy, a teachers’ union official believes.

Malta Union of Teachers senior vice president Marco Bonnici yesterday acknowledged that parents who did not send their children to school were often ignoring fines issued by local tribunals.

“The tribunals responsible for deciding on these cases are toothless. They issue fines and parents just ignore them. Cases often fizzle out and it’s like the child just went on a holiday,” he said.

“We need something more effective. One solution could be to withdraw part of the children’s allowance instead of fining parents,” he said, adding he realised this could mean severing a financial lifeline for needy children.

Mr Bonnici’s comments were reacting to comments made by the Cospicua primary school head Marion Falzon Ghio, who had vented her frustration over the way Maltese schools were plagued by truancy and unfit parents.

The school head had told Education Minister Evarist Bartolo that schools were facing constant student absenteeism.

She also lamented the rampant benefit abuse by parents of repeat truancy offenders.

Urging the minister to re-examine the present enforcement system relating to unfit parents, she had said: “There are pupils who have not had a school uniform for several months and others are riddled with head lice.

Cases often fizzle out and it’s like the child just went on a holiday

“Their parents receive benefits but they still have money for tattoos, cigarettes and hair and nail extensions. Something is wrong.”

Mr Bonnici said truancy was not isolated to particular areas but occurred across the island.

A 2010 study by the University of Malta’s Sociology Department, however, highlighted Cospicua as being particularly prone to the incidence of absenteeism, second only to Valletta.

In fact, truant and idle children was the second most worrying thing to Cospicua residents after drug trafficking.

Mr Bonnici acknowledged that certain areas of the country might deal with more cases of absenteeism on a daily basis, but the reasons underpinning the problem were often similar throughout all schools.

Cospicua residents and heads of schools had cited several reasons for truancy when the study was originally published.

These varied from “I overslept” to “I did not have enough money to buy him/her lunch”.

Mr Bonnici said the union recognised this but added that many also skipped classes to work or help out at home.

Others, he said, were simply idle, often because education was not prioritised at home.

Another problem reinforcing the truancy trend was the lack of regulation of doctors’ sick notes.

“This is a common practice and we receive many complaints on the matter,” he said.

“Some doctors abuse the system. We have discussed this with other unions but these discussions fell flat.”