COUNCILS WERE quick to respond to truancy figures issued yesterday by the Executive.

FIFE COUNCIL said overall pupil absence in Fife “remains below the national average in primary, secondary and special schools.”

Fife 2004-05 figures show a small increase in absence, relative to last year in primary and secondary schools, similar to the national trend.

But there has been a reduction in absence from special schools in Fife since 2003-04 and pupil attendance levels in special schools in 2004-05 were “markedly better” than national average.

Bryan Kirkaldy, Fife’s education service senior manager, said, “Our schools have continued to stress the importance of good attendance … and have taken steps to improve it, including working with parents and pupils to set attendance and attainment targets and working with other agencies to support families where absence may become a problem.

“There is no doubt growth in availability of low cost flights has increased the number of family holidays taken in term time and this has had a significant effect on the pupil absence rate. This is an ongoing problem and I would like to remind parents again of the effect term time absence can have on their child’s schooling.

“Although the Executive separate the figures into authorised and unauthorised, local authorities differ in how they record absences, and in Fife we find it more reliable to combine the figures for purposes of comparison.”

Council home school link officers, based in each secondary school, have a remit to intervene where there is unauthorised pupil absence. The council is also trying out a promising initiative with the police to target groups at risk of truancy linked to vandalism. In a bid to reduce the number of days lost to absence, more initiatives are planned, says the council.

These include personal learning plans to agree targets between pupils, parents and schools, and joint action teams to ensure an effective multi-agency response to chronic cases of truancy.

PERTH AND KINROSS COUNCIL has paid to install Groupcall in all secondary schools—a text messaging system for communicating with parents. A council spokesman said, “Groupcall has already proved successful in some secondary schools using it.

Introduced to improve pupil attendance and communications with parents and to respond to concerns after recent high profile cases, the system will be evaluated in due course.

ANGUS was given a poor report card in secondary school truancy figures.

Faced by statistics showing the county near the wrong end of the league table, mid-Scotland and Fife Tory MSP Murdo Fraser issued an all-round “could do better” message to the Executive, Angus parents and their children.

The figures show Angus has a senior school truancy rate of 2.4%, placing it joint fifth in the national table, a fraction behind Perth and Kinross and 2% behind worst performer Falkirk.

The MSP said, “Truancy disrupts the school learning environment as pupils miss important syllabus and this puts more pressure on teachers. Most importantly, truancy harms the truant’s own education and their long- term prospects.

“Of course, Angus is not alone in having too many truants, as across Scotland there are nearly one million school days lost to truancy.

“This is unacceptable and the Scottish Executive must act to reduce this truancy rate.

“It is worrying that the Executive has just spent nearly £1 million on tackling truancy yet there has been no improvement.

“I believe that we must introduce greater choice for parents and pupils by letting funds follow the children and offer greater choice in the curriculum,” he added.

“This would help deal with the problem of truancy as it would mean the pupil will be engaged in their studies as they have a greater choice in what, and where, they study.

“Nevertheless, schools and politicians can only do so much,” he continued.

“Parents must play their part in encouraging and making their children go to school.

“Of course, the pupils who decide to miss school are the ones that must take responsibility. They must realise the opportunity given to them and take full advantage of being given an education.”

Angus Council education director Jim Anderson said, “The council will study this information with interest as it is always useful to benchmark our statistics with other comparable authorities.”

While the national figures released yesterday showed a slight (0.1%) increase in the number of absences for the year, DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL continued to be among the best performing local authorities in tackling the problem, with just 0.2% of absences from primary, secondary and special needs schools caused by truancy—a quarter of the national average level.

The number of pupils taken out of school for holidays without strong family or personal reasons—a category classed as unauthorised absence—was 0.5% in the city, higher than the national average of 0.3%.

In addition, the attendance rate in Dundee schools was 88.9%, less than the national average of 91.4%.

The Scottish Executive has confirmed that automated call systems, which text parents when their children don’t show up at school, will be rolled out nationally following the publication of this year’s truancy statistics.

Yesterday, Dundee City Council education convener Kevin Keenan said the council, despite possessing one of the lowest truancy rates in the country, would be installing the new technology in every one of the city’s secondary schools.

“In the area of truancy, Dundee continues to have one of the lowest rates in the country. This reflects the city council’s various anti-truancy strategies, which include working in partnership with Tayside police,” he said.

“The city council is always looking at ways of improving school attendance. One of these is the introduction of the truancy call automated phone system to all second-ary schools. This will allow schools to immediately contact parents in the event of any absence.”

In Dundee sickness was the largest cause of absence at 4.3% and ahead of the national average of 2.8%. The number of pupils absent through truancy was 0.2% (0.8% nationally) and the absent through what are seen as unauthorised holidays was 0.5% (0.3% nationally).