Labour Governments measures to mitigate truancy in the U.K - Essay Example

From this research it is clear that truancy has been described as the absence of students from school without a valid reason. The duration of non – attendance varies from a single class to many weeks. Several reasons exist for such truant behaviour and bravado, depression, retention by the parents in order to supervise younger children at home, etc, are some of the usual reasons. Parentally approved absence from school poses a major quandary and endures despite the instructions of the 1996 Education Act that such absence could be sanctioned only by the school authorities.

Moreover, several of the some of the seemingly credible reasons given by parents to account for the absence of their children from school are dubious. It has been observed that forty thousand students abstain from school each day without proper authorization. During the overhaul of the educational system in order to make available education and training to youth between fourteen to nineteen years of age, the Government of the United Kingdom proposed that there should be an incorporation of flexibility in the syllabus and that there should be an enhancement of the status of vocational training.

Investment on its own is incapable of ensuring an education of a high standard. The requirement is to combine reform with investment. Some of the reforms that have been implemented, in order to achieve this objective, are specialist schools, literacy and numeracy strategies, superior vocational education and the right to adult skills training.