Schools in England send police to homes of absent pupils with threats to jail their parents

To give you a little insight, it's totally normal over here in Germany, since decades: (Allgemeine) Schulpflicht (English: (General) Compulsory Schooling)

The idea is, that every child has a right to education. Forcing their parents to let them attend school.

In rare cases police picks up the pupils or parents go to jail.

Still, it's subject to ongoing discussion.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Some schools in England are sending police to the homes of children who are persistently absent, or warning them their parents may go to prison if their attendance doesn’t improve, the Observer has learned.

Headteachers say they are now under intense pressure from the government to turn around the crisis in attendance, with a record 150,000 children at state schools classed as severely absent in 2022-23.

The group’s membership has more than doubled to 58,000 since the government published strict new guidelines on enforcing attendance for schools, including higher fines and prosecution for parents.

She said: “The children I see tell me that they are so worried about school they aren’t sleeping, or they’ve stopped eating, or they are having nightmares.” She added that if an adult were to report similar feelings about their job, she would advise them to seek support or consider moving rather than insisting they must not miss a single day.

Last week, Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, criticised parents who she claimed were allowing their children to take Friday off school because they were working at home.

“That is why we are taking a support-first approach to tackling absence, setting clear expectations that schools and local authorities work closely with families to identify and address the underlying issues.”

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Well they've proved themselves more interested in low hanging fruit, rather than criminality.

Don't these dipshits have anything better to do?

Here in Northern Ireland you get education welfare officers instead. No idea what they do. But this is not a police job.

It’s another attack on families on the margins of society. I am sure Kier will abstain from doing anything.

Great way to make kids even more afraid.

ACAB

This is dumb unless the kids or being held against thier well. I literally miss half of HS and graduated top 20 of my class of 300. Forcing me to go would have been needless cruelty.