Boring lessons blamed for rise in truancy

 Thousands of pupils are playing truant because they find lessons "boring",
 say school inspectors.

 Many pupils are turned off school by an irrelevant curriculum and problems
 catching up with work if they fall behind, says the education watchdog Ofsted.

 It claims there is a direct link between the overall standard of teaching and
 the number of lessons missed.

 The conclusions come amid fears over rising truancy rates — the latest figures
 show 7.5 million school days were lost to truancy in only seven months.

 Truancy has increased year-on-year since 2002 and pupils skipped 1.42
 per cent of lessons without a valid excuse last year.

 ...

 Ofsted says reasons given by pupils for skipping classes include "finding
 some lessons boring", difficulties getting on with teachers, problems
 catching up after falling behind and the "relevance of the curriculum".

 It found that overall effectiveness of teaching was closely linked to
 attendance.

 The watchdog looked at 471 schools across England which were assessed
 as having "good" lessons — and found 67 per cent had good or outstanding
 attendance records. But at the 436 secondary schools with merely
 "satisfactory" teaching standards, that figure dropped to 30 per cent.

 The findings follow criticism by academics that many pupils are being
 turned off education at a young age by mechanical lessons that place too
 much emphasis on testing.

 Christine Gilbert, the chief inspector of schools, said: "Overall attendance
 rates are improving although more needs to be done to tackle unauthorised
 absence and persistent truancy.

 "High quality lessons, strong leadership and management and a curriculum that
 meets pupils' needs effectively can have a significant impact on attendance."

 Ofsted visited 31 secondary schools in 23 areas to scrutinise truancy patterns.
 
 ...

 By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
 Last Updated: 3:55am BST 21/09/2007

 www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/21/nschool121.xml

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