By Aileen Robertson

Parents have been told to take more responsibility for their children’s school attendance after Fife Council announced it was cutting the number of truancy officers by half.

The local authority is making £194,000 worth of savings by redeploying around half of its 19 home school link officers (HSLOs)—who are responsible for pupils who skip classes—to other roles within the council.

This has caused widespread anxiety among parents and support staff throughout Fife. Concerns have been raised about the impact the cuts will have on attendance levels and education.

In a letter, seen by The Courier, to head of education Ken Greer, staff at St Columba’s High School in Dunfermline said the reduction in HSLOs was a “major cause for concern.”

The letter, which was signed by school support staff, said, “We would not be able to function effectively in the best interests of the children in our care.

“Attendance figures would deteriorate and there would be a detrimental impact on attainment.

“The at-risk and vulnerable children would unfortunately suffer the greatest impact of this reduction in HSLO time.”

The letter said St Columba’s HSLO, who had been with the school for 26 years and known three generations of pupils, had a “wealth of knowledge of our community” that was “invaluable in our day-to-day dealings with troubled and troublesome young people.”

Dunfermline High School’s parent council said having individual HSLOs for each secondary school was the only effective measure to deal with truancy.

Parent council chairman Ralph Payne said in a letter to Fife councillors, “The unauthorised absence rate in Fife schools is 3.9% compared with a national figure of only 2%…yet the council claims to have an ‘attend to achieve’ policy.”

Dunfermline Councillor Willie Sullivan said the cuts would create problems for the future.

He said, “There seem to be budget cuts being made in Fife schools, such as to the HSLOS, which save money in the short term but may well have greater costs in the future.

“What are the costs of increase in truancy in terms of policing, social work etc, as well as the costs of kids missing out on education and having to catch up?

“This is a case of saving a stitch in time but costing nine in the future.”

Bryan Kirkaldy, senior manager of Fife’s education service, denied there would be a detrimental impact on pupils.

He said, “We are reducing the budget for home school link officers. Parts of the council are seeing budget savings and others are seeing growth.

“We don’t expect there to be any compulsory redundancies and we expect to redeploy the staff affected.

“The key figure here is the attendance rate of pupils. Attendance rate in Fife, for both primary and secondary schools, is in line with the national average.

“You cannot compare unauthorised and authorised failed attendance between local authorities because they differ in how they code it.

“It is difficult for me to comment on individual people, but what I can say is we are at the moment working on strategies for supporting pupils’ attendance by working with a range of support agencies, including family support workers and the social work service.

“But we find the key thing in this is parents taking an active interest in their child’s attendance pattern and making sure they communicate that interest to them.

“It is the responsibility of parents to make sure their kids are going to school.

“For example, parents should avoid taking them out of school for holidays during term time. You find cheap flights are more available in term time than holiday time.

“Some families are tempted by these deals and there is a national trend for children’s school attendance to be affected by that.”