Truants to lose their bursaries

About 700 senior pupils at present receive the means-tested payments, intended to meet expenses and to encourage pupils to stay on at school beyond 16.

Similar measures are being considered in Glasgow which has the country's worst truancy record.

The move was welcomed by teaching unions, but poverty groups said it would punish the most vulnerable pupils. There was also concern that there is no corresponding sanction for truants from well-off families.

Bursaries are currently paid in advance to senior pupils and college students in Argyll and Bute who attend at least 80% of classes. The new threshold is to be phased in over the next two years.

Students who provide medical certificates for absence will not be penalised but those who fail to attend for other reasons, including ''self-certified illness'', face having to repay bursaries. The education department has retained the right to veto repayments in exceptional circumstances.

A report by education director Archibald Morton states: ''There is a strong correlation between attendance and attainment which reveals that non-attendance or unauthorised absence from school or college has a negative effect on a student's performance in examinations.

''The present 80% attendance rule is relatively easy to obtain and can give students the perception that this level of attendance is acceptable.

''Clearly this is not the case. In the world of work, an employer would not tolerate for very long an employee turning up for work for four days out of five.''

Welfare payments are linked to attendance in France and parts of the US, and now the UK Government is being urged to consider cutting other child-related benefits to persistent truants. Payments made to parents in Scotland include child benefit, clothing and footwear allowances.

Glasgow City Council is also consulting on other measures which include expelling persistent truants, rewarding the school with the city's best attendance record with cash or equipment, and issuing out-of-school passes to children who have a legitimate reason for not attending classes. Police would have the power to detain children not carrying a pass.

Tino Ferri, executive member of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers, said: ''If you want to clear the streets of truants, then the only way to do it is to hit them where it hurts most - in the pocket.

''If you mean business, then you have to encourage pupils and their parents to face up to their responsibilities.''

However, Peter Kelly, a research officer with the Scottish Low Pay Unit, said: ''When kids are truanting it's a sign of problems at school and I don't think making the children of these families more vulnerable to poverty will affect behaviour in the way local authorities predict.

''It's a dead-end street to attack people for their own failings. It seems that they are attacking people who are least able to defend themselves.

''If Argyll and Bute has any kind of anti-poverty strategy, this would seem to fly in the face of it.''

A spokeswoman for the charity Children 1st said: ''We would prefer to see more positive ways of dealing with truancy which address the reasons why pupils truant.

''The withdrawal of bursaries will cause hardship and could lead to difficulties within the family.''

Damian Killen, director of the Poverty Alliance, said: ''The general experience of taking hard-line economic sanctions shows it is more likely to discourage people from positive participation than it is to promote their integration.

''We need to balance the short-term, relatively low cost of that kind of decision against the longer-term implications of dealing with people who have had poor access and made poor use of the education system.''

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