While the UK government is considering raising the school leaving age to 18, one of our local schools has introduced an automatic parent notification trial system, in an attempt to combat the high increase in truancy and make some effort to keep the many roamers off the streets, and in school, at least till 16.

Electronic registration takes place, by 10.00am, absent pupils noted , after which their parents contacted via text messages, automated phone calls or emails undertaken until a response is received.

Is it working or deterring schoolies ?, latest report from the mouths of babes “you get caught, tell the teachers to F**k off, get suspended”, seems the official way not to attend school.

Never mind this high tec idea, bring back the good old fashioned truancy officer, beaky bob as he was known to us, cycling round on his clapped out old bike, challenging any child out of school, rapping on parent’s doors.

This man enjoyed nothing more than an aroused suspicion of truancy, a quick chat with mum, who realising her little darling had done a bunk, remained fuming at home, whilst beaky then set off in pursuit of offending scoundrel. He was heralded an institutional legend, a godsend by locals and schools, the teachers and parents friend.

What sort of man applied for a job like this ?, A man of the community, one with principles, no conscience, that the young tearaways he sought out and found , were heading straight back to school or home under his guidance for a meeting with the slipper or cane, or a few whacks off mum or dad.

This was a man who boasted real job satisfaction, your real jobs worth. One and a few like him who defiantly kept a few truants in check, without the aid of mobile phones or computers

Mind you, I don’t know who came off worse, those that were caught and hauled before the head for the inevitable, or beaky who more than often, returned to his bike, to be seen huffing and puffing, pumping up yet another of his many unexplained flattened tyres.

K

Well said, Ketta.

I well remember the truancy officer. He came to our house a couple of times - though I never played truant during my time at school. It was usually because I'd been off for a few days, and my parents hadn't sent a note in.
What happened to them? Replaced by 'Community Support Officers' I imagine, who seem always to be walking in pairs in areas where there has never been any trouble.
I imagine a bean-counter somewhere decided we didn't need them any more, and the rest, as they say, is history. Personally, I blame bean-counters for many of our ills today, not least of which is the NHS, but that's another story...

Ketta for PM I say. Got to be better than the bean-counter that's being proposed!

Hello Ketta, I'm oddly curious about your post. There has been similar talk here about keeping the kids in school longer but they were only putting off the inevitable. We would just end up with older kids on the streets.

Fortunately, the Government is now encouraging people to consider trade apprenticeships, and this is not just for the young. Adults are offered a wide range of skills too. This idea is an attempt to get young people into and to allow older people to gain higher skills.

Having said that, I would like to move on to asking you about the other point you raised about students regestering in the mornings.

Did you have just the one registration each day? Was there any other procedure in place to keep tabs on students during the day.

I ask this because when I was at school, there were two roll calls per day. First call was at the start of the first period and last call was at the start fo the seventh-the second last period of the day.

I remember a lot of students would answer roll call in the morning, then abscond for most of the day, returning in the seventh period for the last roll call of the day.

No teacher at the school was any the wiser during the day as to the absence of students. The rolls were never checked in any of the following periods so it was clear sailing for those planning to wag it for a few hours.

The local Bowling Alley thrived for years from students shooting off for 5 periods of the day. The school never contacted the authorities regarding truency and parents were non the wiser that their little darlings were on the loose during the day.

Mike.

Mike from Oz:

In my days at school the gates were locked at 9am by the caretaker, and re-opened at 4pm. The only other way into and out of the school was via the main office. Any pupil passing through there had to have a note from the teacher explaining why they were leaving school. The railings were 10ft high, so climbing them would be difficult, and you would easily be seen from the rest of the school.
Several did attempt it, and several were caught. Each was given six strokes of the cane. Despite this, one boy was foolish enough to attempt it a second time. He was again given six strokes of the cane and expelled. This was announced at morning assembly.
By the way, this was not a private school, it was a state grammar school, and a very famous one at that. As you can imagine there were few problems with truancy.
Pupils from any of the city centre schools who absconded would be reported by shop staff. All schools had obligatory uniforms, so it was easy to know which school the pupils were from, and a phone call would be made to the school, with predictable results.

Falling Star, none of the schools I attended ever locked their gates.

During school hours at my secondary school, students were always moving to different classrooms at the different campuses on a daily basis. I remember going to classes at a Primary school near by in some protable classrooms my school leased from the primary school because of a shortage of space at my school.

There were three campuses of my school which all bordered a park the school used for a football, Softball and Cricket games which had no gates so it was an easy escape route for those who practicing the art of absconding. I can stiil remember the older brother of a friend in my class who used this route. Admittingly he was past school leaving age and he just took off home when he felt like it. I remember a teacher bailing him up and the kid telling him that he was 16 and the teacher was powerless to stop him.

I suppose we were lucky that shop keepers had better things to do than to run around reporting kids who were seen in the shopping centres or on the streets. I also think it would have been near impossible to point the kid out as there were nearly a thousand students at my school.

Antother thing was that sports days were held on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons and some sports such as Golf and indoor Bowling were off campus. The Golf course was about 2 miles away and students had to make their own way there.

The Bowling alley was located in the CBD. With so many kids coming and going I think the shopkeepers got used to seeing them and probably wouldn't have noticed or had any concern about seeing students in the street.

If a student had a dental appointment, the school would be advised in writing by the parent in the form of a note advising the school the student was to attend an appointment.

As we had between 6 and eight teachers a day taking classes, the note was handed into the office and the office staff would make a note on the roll. you couldn't trust a treacher with a note because they would most likely forget to hand it in to the office.

Mike.

MIKE

It helped to be able to imitate either parent's writing with notes.


I got out of bloody rugby for most of 2 years through that, plus about a dozen convenient doctor's/dentists/optician's appointments which got me off for an afternoon's boozing/girlfriend activities etc.


Happy days!



Steve

Mike from Oz

There were almost a thousand kids in our school too, but no matter, the school knew who was in and not in (roll call after assembly), and everyone outside knew the uniforms. This was in the mid-late 50s bear in mind.
We were allowed out once a week for sports. We had to be taken five miles in a specially chartered bus to the playing fields. A game of football or rugger (depending on which master [for that is what we called them]was taking sports), an obligatory cold shower, even in winter, and you made your own way home, which in my case took about an hour, because I had to travel on two different buses.
Those were the days...

Thanks for the prompt reply Falling Star. I started school in 1958 and was at my secondary school almost a decade after you. I guess times change over periods and there is quite a difference between our two systems.

I am going to use a slang term here as not to confuse a nationality with a subject. You mentioned that students were caned for truency.

We had a few Poms who taught at our school and they were by far the worst when it came to discipline. Most of the other teachers, apart from the female teachers we had were fairly reasonable, prefering to lecture on the benefits of a good education rather than resorting to the strap as the Poms and a lot of the females did.

It was often suggested that these teachers from England came out here because they couldn't get a job there. Others suggested they took up teaching because they couldn't get a job as prison warders.


I remember getting pulled out of class by one of these nerds for loudly walking through the hallway. He tried and I emphasise the words tried to strap me but as I could see over his head, I wasn't going to play his stupid game and told him so walking off telling him I was going to report him to the Headmaster. In simple terms, the Headmaster was a great Bloke and I finished getting off. The teacher wasn't so lucky. He wasn't there next sommester.


And Steve, I had a nice little business in the note forging department at school. I used to write in the old style of writing compared to the newer style of writing introduced into Primary Schools in the mid sixties.

Because of my style which was similar to my parents, I was in demand at school by those requiring absentee notes. One cigarette per note.

Very Sleazy I know, but what can you expect from a country populated by convicts who were sent here for stealing bread. Anyone up for a cheap loaf of sliced high fibre, low GI? Old habits die hard Steve!

Mike from the Colonies.

Hi Mike

From my own school days, primary school, registration was held first thing morning and after lunch. The truancy officer called at the school, on a daily basis, records of absenteeism collected from the previous day. If a child was absent for just one day , a note was required on their return. No note and his/her absence checked out along with the others calls of the day.

The officer called in person at the absentees house, parents had to give a legitimate reason for their child not being in school this was in the form of a signed declaration. Strange by today’s standards, but few families owned a telephone, notes on return were the usual form of contact, hence why a note on return of one days absence required no follow up check, unless forgotten or not available.

Senior school - Registration was taken at the start of the day. after lunch and end of day You were deemed absent if you were more than 10 mins late, having then, to make your way to the office for a correction of late mark. You didn’t need to get more than three of these.

Class lessons, some teachers did a quick name check off the register, whilst others asked pupils if anyone was missing, doing a quick head count. assumed verified with the form tutor later.

Shops keepers and local residents were very vigilant, very few pupils got away with skipping school, The truancy officer a momentous figure back then, for both primary and senior schools, Truancy treated as a very serious offence with serious consequences for those that choose to abscond.

On another point, UK Government were at one point considering substantial fines for parents of persistent truants. I don’t think many children under 16 would really realise the consequence to their parents, in having to pay such a fine, or in some cases be bothered, if you take the view that parents having been unable or unwilling to get their child to attend school, then the chances of parents driving the point home, or finding any effective punishment or deterrent, also seem very remote.

By coincidence there is a report into yesterday news of the rising levels of absenteeism in our schools. The second link is yet another of the crazy ideas.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6506339.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6509815.stm

As for the forging of notes, I did a lot of it for one of my siblings, sometimes under duress, unfortunate for me having a parent that shared the same place of education for two years truanting was not an option, then boarding school there was no place worth escaping to.

Glad both you and Steve found something educational to do whilst skiving, in Steves case enhancing the fields of human biology and chemistry.
K

Firstly, at all my schools up untill the last year when the comprehensive fiasco was started we had our own class teacher who took us for most lessons, we had teachers for specialist subjects who took us in our own class room where we had our own desks.
This is the opposite of the comprehensive system where one travelled from class to class and did not have ones own desk.
Registration was done morning and afternoon and with mostly the same teacher it was difficult to bunk off to say the least.
There was virtually no truancy at my schools, perhaps due to the fact that any truancy resulted in six of the best from the head without exception.
No note, ie sickness etc and one got caned.
There was virtually no absenteeism, a bit different from now.