Legal Questions and Answers by
Jonathan Stones of John Barkers
Question :-
Wasn't it incredible to hear all the do-gooders squealing like hell about a woman getting sent to prison for a few days for not sending her children to school?
They should wake up to the facts. There is a serious truancy problem in this country. The fact that children caught in truancy sweeps in towns and cities are in 80% of cases accompanied by parents shows where the blame lies.
The shocking thing is not that this woman was sent to jail but that she was the first.
These days the courts bend over backwards to avoid sending people to prison because of the problem of overcrowding. To end up in jail you have to be a really serious criminal or a really stupid individual.
The do-gooders continued to protest despite reports flooding in from around the country of regular truants being hauled off to school by shocked parents. In some cases kids were seen at school for the first time in months.
This woman was the first; she should not be the last!
Answer :-
I do not imagine for a moment that the courts are now going to be putting a stream of truants' parents behind bars. Nor would that be a desirable situation.
This particular court took a highly unusual course of action, in what appears to have been an exceptional case.
Reports suggest that the school in question had tried on something like 75 occasions to get the woman to respond to letters, attend school for meetings or speak to school or education authority staff, without any response.
Even more seriously, court summonses were ignored. So it was about as bad as it gets.
Whether or not this case will have any long-term effect remains to be seen. The mother herself said in interviews after her release that she deserved the sentence and that it would change her attitude to her children attending school. It does appear to have had a dramatic impact on her truanting children, who have had an unblemished attendance record since the court case.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that, for a time at least, it did also have a wider impact on school attendances. It will be interesting to see whether that translates into hard figures when the annual statistics are collated.
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