Schools in UK send police to homes of absent pupils | Hacker News Reader

Schools in UK send police to homes of absent pupils

theguardian.com

19 pointsojhughes17 comments

I really don't get how police officers have time for stuff like this. It just feels like a way to give police an opportunity to power trip.

There's only really 4 options

1) the police do it

2) dedicated 'truant officers' do it

3) social services do it

4) noone does it

Of the 3 that actually achieves anything, I suspect the police doing it is likely to be the least power-trippy, dedicated truant officers would just be too expensive, and social services are also run thread-bare by the tories to the point where they'd not really have time for it either.

I don't think any of them achieve anything. You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. It's easier to forcefully hydrate a horse (IV fluids) than to make someone learn.

If they're deliberately missing from class then chances are high that they wouldn't be productive in the class either.

I would say that option 4 would achieve the most, because it avoids the harm that the first 3 create.

Its partially a well check. A kid missing school can be alarming. What if they were kidnapped by a parent? Etc. Happens all the time, and the truent checks give important info id imagine

Many many years ago, my mother-in-law was confronted by a truant officer. She had supposed that floods lower in her town had meant that the schools were closed and that her son and his buddies had a reason to be goofing off, traveling the streets in a boat etc. This was in Pennsylvania. I think that the truant officer threatened her with a ticket that would have led to a fine.

Missing from the article, another impact from lockdowns and remote learning, record number of student school absence/abandonment

Sending the police, instead of someone to help the students and parents, is not the right approach, as the article points out

> Schools in England

England != UK

Technically still correct. As is "schools on earth..."

Does this mean that you can't homeschool in England? I mean, as you would be absent from school....

You can indeed homeschool: https://www.gov.uk/home-education

Thank you for that!

So I guess this is about problem kids and/or parents who can't get their shit together.

No, there is a lot more context than that.

Apologies for not giving a more detailed answer, its late at night.

Ok, does that mean that the Police is showing up to threaten wealthy parents of kids with good grades, who nevertheless miss school because they we're travelling with their parents?

No, because they know how to play the game.

The rules are normally around consecutive days of absence.

But also because wealthy parents don't take their children out of school to go travelling. There is a reason that boarding is popular.

Are truancy cops a new thing in the UK?

Schools are day prisons for kids, who would otherwise turn feral if left unsupervised. So sending the police to round them up makes sense.

This is done in New Jersey as well .

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