EDUCATION chiefs in Cumbria have called on the Government to scrap truancy targets.

Senior education officer Barry Archibald, of Cumbria County Council, argued that the targets encouraged teachers to accept questionable excuses for absences to avoid missing attendance targets.

There was evidence to suggest schools had been registering missing pupils as authorised absences when there was not a good enough reason for them to be out of school, he said.

Figures for unauthorised absences had been going down and settled at around 0.5 per cent of total absences but two years ago, when the LEA pressed schools to be stricter about authorising days off, the numbers started creeping up and last year the figure was 0.8 per cent.

It was not a case of teachers lying, he stressed, but that some had exercised their discretion to authorise absences too loosely a situation that was changing as the LEA took a stronger line.

"For example, a boy comes in from two weeks' absence saying he had a cold - that may have been accepted in the past, I think people now are being more challenging," said Mr Archibald. "Did he really need to be off for two weeks with a cold?"

Calls to put an end to targets was one of the conclusions from truancy sweeps held across the county in December.

Teams of education welfare officers and police descended on town centres and stopped 186 pupils.

Some 71 per cent were with a parent or carer and 30 per cent offered illness as a reason for being out of class, and for the majority their absence had been authorised by the school.

The illness figure was greeted with "concern" by Mr Archibald because so many children "were too ill to be in school but were fit enough to be out shopping".

The results of the truancy sweeps were presented to the latest session of the CCC education consultative forum a body of head teachers, teacher union representatives, parent governors and county councillors.

Coun Simon Leyton was concerned that parents were stuck between the potential wrath of social services if they left children at home unattended when they were ill but not bedridden, yet risked trouble with the education welfare service if they took their youngsters out with them. "They are in the wrong from the start," he said.

Mr Archibald said education welfare officers would allow absences if parents had a good, genuine reason for their children being off school but not at home.

But he added it was important that the message went out that it was not acceptable for youngsters to be out of school without good reason.

Of the seven Cumbrian towns targeted in the truancy sweeps, Kendal topped the absconders chart as sweeps over two days picked up 51 school children compared to 49 in Carlisle, the second busiest centre, and only two in Ulverston, at the bottom of the chart.

However, 30 of the youngsters found in Kendal were not from the town and half were from outside the county, including children taking term-time holidays in the Lakes with their families.

Some 12 Cumbrian children were picked up outside the area, including several at Gateshead's Metro Shopping Centre and in Lancaster city centre.

Allyson Ingall, deputy head of Kendal's Heron Hill Primary School and a representative of the national Union of Teachers, suggested sweeps of Majorcan beaches would have picked up more of the county's kids and highlighted what she believed was a big problem with families taking term-time breaks.

"From my perspective in a very middle class area of Cumbria, more than 50 per cent of our pupils have term-time absence for holidays and that is a huge problem for us. A huge amount of our time is spent filling in holiday forms and getting children back up to speed when they return.

"The government needs to tackle the travel industry. They have a moral obligation to make it easier for parents to keep children in school."

May 29, 2003 16:30