Lyceum №29
Report
Be Cool-Stay at School
Artyukhin Artyom
Teacher: Golovko O.V.
Tambov 2017
Contents
1 Introduction, p3
2 What are the definitions of: truancy, truant and play truant? p4
3 Why do students skip school? p5
4 Truancy in the UK p6-7
5 What are the consequences of truancy? p8
6 Combating truancy p9
7 Truancy in Russian schools p10
8 Truancy at my school p11
9 Conclusion p12
10 Bibliography p 13
Introduction
A lot of students play truant every day. Some of them don’t want to come back
to school after their holidays. Actually, truancy is a great problem of our society.
Surveys show that most children who miss their classes without good reasons
have problems with alcohol, fights, drugs, murders and other kinds of violence. Truancy is spread all over the world.
In my research I tried to learn and compare the main reasons of truancy in Russia and in Britain.
In my work I tried to answer the following questions:
1 What is truancy?
2 Why do students play truant?
3 How does truancy affect schools and education?
4 How can we prevent truancy?
The purpose of my work is to research the problem of truancy in schools of Russia and Britain.
I think my work is urgent because, firstly, the problem of truancy worries parents, teachers, students and our society on the whole. Secondly, the number of students who miss classes without good reasons is on the increase from year to year. As a result, more and more young people, especially truants, suffer from alcoholism and drugs.
The hypothesis of the study: let’s assume that the problem of truancy exists in Russia and in Britain.
According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary "Truant" means a child who is regularly absent from school without permission
“ Truancy” is an unexcused absence from a particular class or the entire school day
Truancy can be broadly divided into two categories:
“Play truant” means to be regularly absent from school without permission
The most common reasons why children play truant are:
Bullying
Anti-social and unruly behaviour
Problems in the family home
Undiagnosed behavioural or emotional problems
General dislike of school
Bully means to hurt or frighten someone who is smaller or less powerful than you.
Bullying is a problem in many schools.
The British government has announced that school bullying has reached epidemic proportions, nearly every child was affected by the problem.
A study of 40 countries, published in the International Journal of Public Health says that Russia is on the top-ten list of the countries in the world with the most bullying of teenage students.
• In Britain 70% of teenagers said that, in their opinion, young people got involved in anti-social behaviour because they were bored. 80% of young people said they had nowhere to go and nothing to do outside school and they hung around in the streets as a result. • More than 70% of 11-16 year olds said that they have witnessed anti-social behaviour over the last year, 12% of young people belong to a gang. • 62% said that they did not know where to go to get help or
information if they needed it.
High levels of family conflict can be a key reason that a child misses school. Allowing large amount of unsupervised time or requiring the child to assist with family errands can contribute to truancy. Some children even miss school as a way of getting attention from parents.
Skipping school can also be directly linked to poor grades or frustration in learning. Students who miss school or classes fall behind their classmates and this leads to low self-esteem.
Alcohol and drugs reduce his or her ability to remember what he or she reads or is taught in class. As a result, he or she will experience frustration with learning and skip school.
In the United Kingdom, children between the ages of 5 to 16 must receive a satisfactory level of full-time education, and parents should enforce this. However, there are children who are not receiving this level of full-time education because they play truant. A teacher or head teacher must find out from the child’s parents why truancy takes place.
Teenage truancy increases from year to year. In England's secondary schools truancy rose by more than 10% last year and persistent truants are in 146 schools, according to government figures.
This year's figures show that 55,000 pupils have missed classes during the school year - an annual increase of about 4,500.
What are the consequences of truancy?
Those students who do not attend school regularly often take the first step towards lifetime problems. Most experts believe that truants are involved in crime and violence. Boys and girls can be truants. The average age of a truant student is 15 years old, but some children begin skipping school as young as 10. Skipping school is a cry for help and a signal that the child is in trouble. Children who are truants can be engaged in antisocial behavior such as gang membership, alcohol use, drug use, high –risk sexual behavior, cigarette smoking, suicidal behavior, theft and vandalism. Truant girls can become pregnant and leave school. So, truancy is a way to serious violent and nonviolent crime.
The British government introduced electronic registration, police centers and education staff to solve the problem of truancy. Electronic registration systems record the presence, absence and lateness of students and staff in real-time.
Most local education authorities employ education social workers to record attendance and help parents fulfill their responsibilities. Education social workers often visit families whose children fail to attend school regularly. The local education authority may take legal proceedings against parents whose children do not regularly attend school and they can also take parents to court. Parents are given 12 weeks to improve their children's attendance or face the threat of court action which leads to fines up to £2,500 or three months in prison. The government has spent nearly £1 billion on the solution of the problem of truancy and yet it is getting worse.
Officially, truancy is not a problem in Russia. There are no official figures to show how many students play truant in our country every year. Today the government pays great attention to the problems of school. In most schools teachers demand an official note to explain pupil’s absence or call parents. There are new technologies in Russian schools such as Electronic Diary, it helps to prevent truancy.
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