| 1 | 1 | | She is articulate, intelligent - and a persistent truant. Every day for nine months, |
| 2 | | Cathy Johnson 'bunked off' school to wander the streets, sit with friends in a park or go for |
| 3 | | bus rides. It was not a glarnorous existence. Often it was boring and lonely. |
| 2 | 4 | | 'I used to sit in the public library, reading books just to keep out of trouble,' says |
| 5 | | Cathy, a 15-year-old who is now at a special unit for persistent truants in inner London, |
| 6 | | trying to catch up on her lost education. Her experience is typical of many teenagers for |
| 7 | | whom the boredom of having nothing to do outside school is still more attractive than |
| 8 | | attending lessons, |
| 3 | 9 | | Last week the government published figures of truancy rates in the country's schools |
| 10 | | and sparked a furious dispute over whether the figures were fair. This masked the real |
| 11 | | issues: why do children decide to 'bunk off' and what do they get up to when they do ? |
| 4 | 12 | | The reasans and the experiences of some persistent truants interviewed by The |
| 13 | | Sunday Times last week are complex and varied. |
| 5 | 14 | | For Cathy, it began in her second year at secondary school. She was unable to cope |
| 15 | | with the pace of schoollife, her friends were teasing her, and she began missing a coupIe of |
| 16 | | lessans a week. 'There were toa many people moving about all the time. I just could not |
| 17 | | remember everything,' she says . ' I wanted new friends. I'd known my classmates since |
| 18 | | primary school. They kept bringing up things about me from primary school, but I had |
| 19 | | changed.' |
| 6 | 20 | | In her fourth year, she stopped going to school. At first she went with a gang of other |
| 21 | | truants who occupied the local park, but their drug-taking, fighting and verbal attacks on |
| 22 | | local people turned her off. ' I just didn't want to be involved in all that,' she says. Instead, |
| 23 | | she spent most of her time watching tel evision and listening to music. |
| 7 | 24 | | Life was equally aimless for Jenny Street, 15, who started playing truant because she |
| 25 | | 'didn't like school'. She says : 'I just used to sit around with friends on stairs or in the park. |
| 26 | | Sometimes I would get on a bus or go for a train ride. I never shoplifted like some of the |
| 27 | | ot hers because my mum would have killed me.' Like the others, her parents at first knew |
| 28 | | nothing about her exploits. |
| 8 | 29 | | She began to skip lessons when she was 12 because she had not completed |
| 30 | | homework, disliked the tea cher or hated the work. 'Teachers talked to you like you were |
| 31 | | lower than them,' she says. ' I gat into a lot of rows with them for telling them what I |
| 32 | | thought.' |
| 9 | 33 | | Welfare officers say th e most common causes of tru ancy are difficulties with school |
| 34 | | work, personal traumas, such as family break-up or the death of a close relative, bullying |
| 35 | | and even sexual abuse at home or at school. Prolonged ill-health mayalso leave a child |
| 36 | | struggling to catch up. Some truancy is condoned by parents, with children kept at home to |
| 37 | | look after th e family or to help with shopping. |
| 10 | 38 | | It is not simply the lower economie classes who are guilty. Recent cases range from |
| 39 | | the single parent who told the court her 14-year-old daughter was 'out of control' to a |
| 40 | | working couple whose 'energies lay elsewhere than their son's education', according to the |
| 41 | | education welfare officer. |
| 11 | 42 | | What worries experts is that when they are loose on the streets, truants may be at |
| 43 | | risk .The issue is highlighted in its extreme farm by two current court cases - the James |
| 44 | | Bulger trial, where two boys playing truant are accused of murdering a two-year-old, and |
| 45 | | the alleged torture and killing of Suzanne Capper, a teenager who was said to have aften |
| 46 | | played truant. |
| 12 | 47 | | So what needs to be done? For Dennis O'Keeffe, of North London University, who |
| 48 | | headed a government-funded study into truancy, there are certain basic 'virtues' that |
| 49 | | schools need to stress once again. 'Keeping a close eye on pupiIs as was normal in the past, |
| 50 | | good relations between parents and staff, and the quality of teaching. They are obvious, but |
| 51 | | they need to be said again and again,' he says. |
