With the possible exception of budding musicians and authors who will be able to rock and write on the dole, no-one can doubt New Labour's conviction that there is too much welfare around, and that it has engendered a culture of dependency. Mr Blair and his Social Secur-ity Minister, Mr Frank Field, are determined to change that culture largely by eradicating welfare for all but the truly needy and deserving. Even then they will be set conditions with which they must comply if they are to continue to receive benefit. This principle is now being extended, dubiously, to education.
Argyll and Bute Council has decided that senior pupils in receipt of a means-tested bursary will need to achieve a school attendance rate of at least 95% or they will have to pay back the value of the grant. Absence confirmed by a medical certificate will be allowed, but anything else will not. The council's education chief correctly emphasises the crucial corollary between attainment and attendance and points out, properly, that an employer would not tolerate employees coming to work for only four out of five days a week (as the current threshold allows). There is also the point that the bursary is intended to encourage young people to stay on at school.
They are also old enough to take responsib-ility and appreciate the implications - and cost - of truancy. But extending the penalty for non-attendance to withdrawal of child benefit and clothing and footwear grants, options raised in a consultation paper produced by Glasgow City Council, is another matter. The council has the worst attendance figures in Scotland and is seeking to raise the level of debate by challenging a government which makes great play of tough choices. Ministers maintain that deprivation is no excuse for truancy but we doubt very much that effectively worsening poverty levels by punitively withdrawing benefit from families on welfare (which already have an ingrained negative attitude to education) will help. And not all truants are from deprived backgrounds.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article