New Journal joins team aiming to cut Camden’s 36,000 missed school days

TWO skiving schoolboys are enjoying unseasonably good weather in Camden High Street when their fun in the sun is interrupted.
Looming over them is the Camden truancy patrol, a mixture of police and council officers. One of the police officers asks: “Shouldn’t you boys be in school?”
Simon says he has a stomach ache, for which fresh air is the best treatment. His friend Rob has a more complex excuse that involves his sister’s pregnancy and his dad not having a set of house keys.
Neither reasons quite pass muster with the truancy team, who are impervious to weak excuses. Both boys, by now loudly indignant, are bundled into the back of the truancy team’s van to be driven back to school, now nearly two hours late.
They quickly grasp that they are not going to be just dropped off at the school gates. Rather, they will be handed over directly to the headteacher.
Rob begs: “You can watch me walk in.” But it is to no avail, and he is soon repeating his lengthy excuse to the head.
The truancy team do not stay to hear the end. But, with a letter to follow to their parents, Simon and Rob will think twice before skiving off school again.
The patrol, the ninth in three weeks, seems to be having an effect. Attendance at Camden’s schools is the best it has been for seven years.
The average secondary school pupil makes it into school 92.1 per cent of the time. The figures are better still for primary school pupils, with an average of 94 per cent attendance, above the national target figure of 92 per cent. Yet problems with punctuality and attendance have long been a blot on Camden schools’ otherwise largely good inspection reports, and the council’s education department estimates that pupils missed a total of 36,000 school days last year without permission.
Camden is doing several things to deal with this. Besides the patrols, school assemblies stress the importance of good attendance.
Teddy bears, pens and other prizes – all bearing the mantra “You’re only cool if you don’t miss school” – are handed out to primary school pupils scoring 100 per cent attendance.
The patrols are there to deal with students who persist in hanging out in McDonald’s or on the Heath when they should be in the classroom. They also unearth problems that might otherwise be overlooked.
When approached by PC Aidan Russell on last Friday’s patrol, one teenager insisted: “I’m 16, boss.” Yet, when pushed further, he admitted his birthday is still a week or so away. He should, by law, be attending school until the end of June.
The boy told the team he is in one of Camden’s foster homes and enrolled at a college in the south of the borough. On this occasion, they let him go on his way after taking his details.
“Sometimes it’s a judgement call,” said Ed Magee, Camden’s truancy supremo. “He’s obviously not finding school very successful, and this is a case we’ll have to follow up.” Calls will be made to the foster home and the college to ensure the teenager’s problems are investigated.
Even children accompanied by their parents do not escape the team’s attention.
More often than not the child is being taken to the doctor, and mum or dad has a prescription or note to prove it.
But there have been instances of families who have only recently arrived in the borough and are not sure how to go about enrolling their child in school. So a child that might have been overlooked for months can be found a place within days.
Yvette Stanley, Camden’s acting director for education, joined last Friday’s patrol and was impressed with what she saw.
She said: “The patrols are a visible presence. The message is spreading that you can get caught, and that’s an effective deterrent.”
She pointed out that a pupil who is a half-hour late every day will have missed a whole day’s schooling over a fortnight. “We want to make it clear that every day counts,” she said.