3) Absence makes the heart ….

As you may have noticed, the same old social issues and problems come round every few years; they get chewed over and when they no longer seem to be worth the jaw ache are spat out and left on the carpet in favour of something else. Then one day, for some reason, they are taken up again and once more become the touchstone issue of the day, a harbinger, a proof that we are all going to hell. So, I thought I’d get ahead of the pack and lock my nashers onto the temporarily deserted bone of school truancy. Even in terms of the official figures there are a lot of pupils not going to school http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7385275.stm however; I don’t think that these students should be seen as a discreet subset of the school population who have cut themselves off from their peers, rather they should be seen as a subset of a larger group: the disengaged. By the age of 15, many of these little lovelies can be found floating around school, some having registered, some not. Did you know that one of the recurring problems with students who have been excluded from school is keeping them away from the premises? When we discuss students who leave school without 5 GCSEs http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7348088.stm , I think we should be thinking of a group of children who have been in the process of gradually disengaging since they were 12 or 13. They slowly become unglued from the school routine and their reaction can then take the form of absence, disruption or even sometimes bursts of enthusiasm. People have tried many ways to re-engage these types of pupils. At the moment, peer mentoring seems quite fashionable, however this wouldn’t be my first choice, I think that having a significant sympathetic adult is what is needed. Anyone fancy starting an e-mentoring/mentoring scheme for occasional truanting/mildly disengaged 13 year olds? Your reward: when truancy next becomes the subject of national alarm you will be running the best stall on the market.