The school roll detective

Katie Fitzpatrick and Caroline Jack

May 23, 2007

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JANET Lloyd: On a mission

A SCHOOLS 'detective' is on a mission to track down missing children in Rochdale.

Janet Lloyd searches for pupils who are not in school - currently 108 of them - and returns them to the classroom.

The council has now launched a high-profile campaign to help Mrs Lloyd with her work.

It has placed posters and leaflets around town asking: "Do you know a child missing from education?"

Mrs Lloyd receives information from agencies including the health authority, the police and homeless service unit, and also acts on anonymous calls from the public, as well as GPs and hospital accident and emergency staff. She said: "The response I receive from families varies. Some are grateful because someone is finally helping them. But you know that others are going to flee again as soon as you find them.

"One child had education in Rochdale for just two days and fled again, and we are now trying to find him.

"You have to be persistent and gain people's confidence because it can take weeks and months sometimes."

Missing

Rochdale councillor Irene Davidson said: "Education is a vitally important part of a child's development and it is both unfair and illegal for children to be missing out in this way."

Since 2003, all councils have been obliged to appoint an officer for children missing education, to oversee school admissions and work with schools to get youngsters back into education.

The Rochdale children, who Mrs Lloyd describes as having `fallen out of the loop and through the gaps', may have never started school, or have been removed by parents due to problems or lack of interest.

School absences can also be caused by extended holidays or even simply moving abroad, but the reasons may be more serious. Mrs Lloyd said: "We are trying to make people think about how many children go missing from education. We have a duty to help and if we find one child from people passing on information it's worth it."

Mrs Lloyd's appointment came in the wake of Victoria Climbie's murder, and the subsequent inquiry which decided that child protection agencies should liaise more closely with each other.

If you know a child who is missing school contact the Children Missing Education hotline on 01706 925 982 or email cme@rochdale.gov.uk

What do you think? Have your say.

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J. Kelly (23/05/2007 at 17:49)

You ask for people to contact the children missing education helpline if they know of a child who is missing school. Some children do not attend school but they are not missing education. They are being home-educated. By not including this fact in your report you are leaving these children and their parents open to unnecessary harrassment. Education and schooling are not always the same thing. Education is compulsory - school is not.

themightyone, S Manchester (23/05/2007 at 21:23)

I wonder, will this new role go so far as to provide parents with decent information on the alternative provision they can make for their children¿s education, or will the focus be on compelling school attendance as the Job title suggests? What about home education? A home educated child is not missing from education; they simply don¿t go to school. Can we expect to see a `not missing¿ box to tick for home educated families? Once that box is ticked, can we expect to be left to discharge our legal responsibility without harassment and compulsion to enter the school system from officials who have no expertise or basic understanding of home education?
Please stop flouting Victoria¿s¿ death as an excuse to impose more surveillance upon ordinary people. Victoria was not unknown, nor was she missing `from education¿. It's shameful to propagate the meme that her plight was a surprise, and continue to twist it for political agenda. It makes a mockery of her suffering.

Fiona Nicholson (23/05/2007 at 23:30)

I would just like to second the comment above. DfES Statutory Guidance specifically states that home educated children are not "children missing education". My own son is 14 and has never been registered with a school; this does not make him "missing education".

Fiona Nicholson
Chair of Education Otherwise Government Policy Group

Annelies Scott (24/05/2007 at 01:01)

What about home educated children? My daughter has never been to school, as we have electively and legally home educated her from the start. As home education is really not very unusual any more, I think it is a great shame that this is not acknowledged in the article and I hope that the "detective" is fully aware of it, and does not end up hounding innocent families. Being in school does not automatically mean a child is receiving a decent education, any more than being out of school means that a child is missing out on an education. Every parent has a right to decide what education will best suit their own children.

Dibsii (24/05/2007 at 09:33)

What an incredibly negative and one-sided article! The journalist who wrote this has not investigated the subject properly. Yes there is a problem when children play truant or are not receiving an education, but there are thousands of children in this country who may be seen out and about during school hours. These children are being 'home educated' by their parents. What sort of community spririt are you fostering if you just encourage the general public to quietly spy and report thousands of responsible families, who have a statutory right to do this. If the 'School detective' has misled your journalist then they are not really on the side of children nor families and are not up to the job.

Baruch (24/05/2007 at 10:03)

In failing to define the term 'education', you are unnecessarily paving the way for the persecution of families who choose to home educate their children, in order to provide a tailor-made education for their children. The 'education' offered by schools is not the only form of learning, and a great many home educating families have chosen to remove their children from schools in order to better equip them academically for the future. I sincerely hope that this article will not cause harassment for home educated children and their families.
Remember, there are many modes of learning, and that which is offered by the schools is not seen by everyone as being optimal. Please take note of the figures for adult illiteracy, and the number of graduates entering the workforce with only a minimal grasp of grammar and literacy.

izzy_tmee, CHESHIRE (24/05/2007 at 10:05)

I agree with the other comment about this not taking into account that a child may be receiving home education. I also think that just rounding up children and herding them into a school doesn't mean that any education is actually taking place. The reasons behind the high level of truancy need to be addressed. If children thought that school was a worthwhile place to be, then maybe they would willingly go? Making children jump through educational hoops by having to follow the national curriculum and be tested is not condusive to learning, which is a natural process and one that you can't really halt. All we can do is make sure that the things that children are learning are going to be useful and relevant to them in their adult life. It has been proven that children who have truanted but who are then given an alternative in which they can focus on an area of interest, do well and are happier. So I think that having a school detective is not a good use of resources, after all, we already have educational welfare officers.

Baruch (24/05/2007 at 10:08)

The author of this article writes:
'The Rochdale children, who Mrs Lloyd describes as having `fallen out of the loop and through the gaps', may have never started school, or have been removed by parents due to problems or lack of interest.'
What about the parents who choose to remove their children from schools in order to provide their children with a superior education to that provided by schools?
The law provides for parents to so choose, and follow up on these decisions unmolested by those whose opinions differ.

schoolisnotabouteducation, none (24/05/2007 at 14:36)

Might I suggest that the figure of 180 pupils on a roll but missing from school is only a small percentage of the pupils on a roll but actually missing education. If Rochdale were serious about helping children missing education, they would start their search within the school classrooms and help those hundreds of children that are failing to achieve despite regular attendance. Chasing the 180 who have the good sense to flee from the persecution that is compulsory attendance at schools that are failing them, is simply a window dressing and job creation scheme that will not result in any more educational achievement for anyone; a waste of public funds. Spend our money making schools more purposeful and the problem of poor attendance would diminish over night. Or as other people have interestingly pointed out, home education might be another place to put some public money to help those disaffected by school - at least make sure Ms Lloyd tells those escapees when she finds them, that home education is an option open to them.

Robynhood, Western Scotland (25/05/2007 at 08:48)

When did investigative journalism die?
Up until the 70's early 80's newspapers gave us the balanced, researched stories that we couldn't get through other media, but now they are just a portable collection of press releases dressed up as 'stories'.
My own view is that the state education system has succeeded in it's aims to the extent that no longer is society a mixture of individuals, no longer do people know how to question what they are told.
If information is imparted from an 'official' source it is accepted as fact.
I hope the home educating sector of society flourishes, for in those children the instinctive behaviour that question's everything and anything will flourish, to the benefit of society.

Barbara Stark, none (25/05/2007 at 13:01)

Your article on missing children in Rochdale states that Janet Lloyd is searching for pupils who are not in school, all 108 of whom are named, numbered and on a school roll! Hardly missing are they? Yet money is being spent creating jobs and urging members of the public to make anonymous reports about children suspiciously free from school attendance.

Ms Lloyd appears so innocently unaware of the incitement to harassment her work involves that she shamelessly admits that some families, when found by her, would rather put themselves through the upheaval of relocation than face the consequences of the agenda of compulsion and forced compliance underpinning Ms Lloyd's function for the council. These families could be spared the trauma if public servants gave full, correct and relevant public information about citizens rights instead of producing misleading posters and public campaigns to further the aim of returning escapees from a system of such all encompassing arrogance that it declares absence from its sacred halls of compulsory attendance is the same as missing education, and would rather see parents prosecuted for their child's non attendance than inform them that school is not, in fact, compulsory!

Millions of pounds are already wasted on truancy patrols hounding the population in public places to find truants. Now we are to be spied upon and the subjects of anonymous reports by our neighbours it seems. The increasing failure and collapse of the state compulsion schooling experiment is distorting society enough already using our own money, without inciting further persecution and cynically using Victoria Climbieï¿½s tragic death to imply that school is the solution to society's ills rather than at the root of many of them.

Barbara Stark
Action for Home education
www.ahed.org.uk/
ahed.pbwiki.com/

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