Unauthorised absence from school (FOI)

Request

Please provide the truancy figures for Jersey schools over the past two years. If you could explain which schools the pupils come from how days have been lost and if there have been and prosecutions or fines as a result.

Response

We do not record absence under the category of Truancy - ‘the action of staying away from school without good reason; absenteeism’. In the interests of transparency the breakdown overleaf provides details of all unauthorised absence (excluding any absence recorded as unauthorised family holiday).

Unauthorised absence and lateness

Unauthorised absence is absence without permission from the school. This includes all unexplained or unjustified absences and arrivals after registration has closed. Further information can be found in the School attendance policy available at the following link on the States web site:

School attendance policy

All unauthorised absence and late arrivals are monitored by schools and addressed internally. A small proportion of unauthorised absence and punctuality concerns require further intervention or support from the Education Welfare Team with additional consideration given to seeking support from other services within Inclusion and Early Intervention, for example, Early Help. If such intervention does not resolve the situation, escalation to attendance panel can be considered and in some cases a referral to a Parish Hall enquiry is required.

Details of the number of attendance panels and Parish Hall enquiries are provided below. To avoid any identification of individual students, numbers have not been broken down by school.

Panels and enquiries held during the academic years 2015/16 and 2016/17

In the last two years no fines have been issued.

Exemption Applied

Article 25 Personal Information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if:

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.