Guides and Resources for Schools and their Communities
"The Education Act (1989) requires that parents enroll their children at school and ensure that they attend. This latter responsibility is shared with school boards of trustees, the Act stating that: Every Board shall, by any means it thinks appropriate, take all reasonable steps to ensure the attendance of students enrolled at its school or schools (or institution or institutions) (1989,31(3))."
Download and use this kit to help your school reduce truancy, increase students desire to attend and also set up a truant-free zone in your community.
Your school will also be listed on our Truant Reporting system.
The kit includes:
- Guidelines on how to use all the resources.
- Information sheets for schools to give to local shop owners to assist in combating truancy so that students will not be served in shops during school hours and reported. These are to be used in conjunction with the shop posters below to create a Truant-Free-Zone in your local shopping area.
- Shop posters that you can print for yourself and use with the above retailer information sheet for your Truant-Free-Zone.
- Guidelines on how to set up a Truant-Free-Zone in your community.
- Posters for in the school.
- "Parent Declaration of Commitment" to the Attendance of their children at your school. To be given to all parents/caregivers to sign to ensure they understand the law and your school's policy on their responsibility to ensure the attendance of their children at your school. The signing of this document would also make it easier to enforce (in particular) Section 29 of the Education Act 1989.
- Authorised permission slips to be used for all absenteeisms.
- Guidelines of suggested procedures for teachers, staff and Attendance Officer to follow on noting non-attendance.
- How to identify students who may become potential truants and how to prevent this from happening.
- Idea for fundraising from local businesses to recover cost of this Truancy Resource Pack.
- How to enrich the total learning experience to ensure students desire to be at school.
- Guideline sheets for students on how to set goals and avoid peer pressure.
All topics are provided in Microsoft Word, PDF and web browser formats for ease of viewing and printing from any operating system for all your teachers.
