HC Deb 26 April 2001 vol 367 cc426-8
2. Mr. David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire)

What plans he has to support schools in using information technology to tackle truancy. [157908]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Michael Wills)

Last month, the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), announced that £11 million will be available to introduce electronic registration systems into more than 500 secondary schools.

Mr. Taylor

Information technology may well cut 10 per cent, of truancy over the next two years, but our pledge at the 1997 general election was to cut it by a third by 2002. Are we on track for that? Is not parentally condoned truancy the real problem? Should we not invest in more low-tech attendance officers to try to combat that problem? Is there not potential in this place to combat Tory truancy from Question Time? The presence of only seven Tory Back Benchers at education and employment questions is dreadful.

Mr. Speaker

Order. That is not the way to proceed with questions on education and employment. I certainly hope that the Minister will not respond in kind.

Mr. Wills

Yes, Mr. Speaker. My hon. Friend is right that parentally condoned truancy is a major problem. I have some figures that we have just received from 112 local education authorities that responded with information on the effectiveness of truancy sweeps. Half said that most children stopped during sweeps were accompanied by parents or carers. In some areas, that was the case with up to 97 per cent. of truants, so it is obviously a big problem and we must address it. That is why we introduced truancy sweeps, which we announced last year.

We are making considerable progress on our manifesto pledge to cut exclusions and are well on track. We have cut 20 per cent, from the highest figure, and we are now introducing measures that will make a significant impact on truancy. The best way to reduce the rate of truancy is to prevent it from happening in the first place, and that is why many of the local projects that we support through our social inclusion pupil support grant target measures to do that. We also know that the use of electronic registration can cut truancy by up to 10 per cent. [Interruption.] Hon. Members might be more interested in this if they took more interest in education policy. We know that electronic registration must be an important part of our strategy to reduce truancy.

Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey)

Every week I see groups of young people of secondary school age in my constituency and I try to discover whether they are at school or not. Every week, I find that many of them are not, and sometimes they have not been there for the whole period during which they should have been attending school.

Will Ministers consider seriously not just the option of daytime school-hours truancy sweeps, but of ensuring that we have enough people, such as detached youth workers, to engage with young people out of school hours at weekends and evenings? They could discover what motivates the kids and get them into some structure, whether through sport, an apprenticeship or work-related project, so that they can get back into the system. Could we not concentrate on such personal mentoring rather than trying to bribe young people into activity with CDs and other things?

Mr. Wills

The hon. Gentleman is right about the importance of having a rounded strategy with a number of different instruments to tackle the problem of truancy. His constituency, I believe, is benefiting from the excellence in cities initiative and he will know, precisely for the reasons that he outlined, that personal mentors are an important part of that initiative, performing the kind of function that he described. The Connexions service will also provide personal mentors for older pupils to make sure that they get the kind of support that they need to overcome the barriers that divide them from school and education and that cause many of them to truant in the first place.

Mr. Andrew Reed (Loughborough)

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a wide range of difficulties and reasons why an individual may truant? Does he agree that the role of local education authorities is crucial for children with emotional and psychological problems, who are not truanting through choice, but have problems that need to be addressed? Will he ensure that local education authorities have sufficient resources to give back-up to schools, rather than taking cash away from local education authorities and putting pressure on schools, as large secondary schools with those problems cannot cope with the vast amount of work?

Mr. Wills

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the importance of investment in those resources. It is all very well having the ideas, but unless there is money to back them up, they are meaningless, which is why we are now investing £174 million in measures to tackle exclusion and truancy. By way of contrast, that is 10 times the amount spent in the Opposition's last year in government.