Real life my kid laughed when I was tagged for her skiving

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'My truant daughter should be punished,not me!'

Wednesday 07 December 2011

Shocking figures released earlier this year showed school truancy is dramatically on the rise, despite courts punishing parents with fines, community service and even jail terms.

The statistics – which revealed 67,000 kids skip school every day in the UK – were released as mum Jane Woodward, 38, branded prison a “holiday camp” after she was freed halfway through a six-week jail sentence for failing to stop her son skipping school.

Now mum-of-four Tina Sisson – who was also taken to court over her daughter’s skiving – has told Closer she’s convinced the system is failing because it’s truants who should be punished, not their parents.

Tina, 35, was forced to wear a tag for three months, fined £85, and given a strict curfew after her 15-year-old daughter D’Jorn refused to go to school.

“I know I’m responsible for her, but D’Jorn should have been punished, not me,” claims. Tina, from Belper, Derbyshire.

“It’s unfair and my daughter didn’t learn anything from it. While I was stuck inside, she was free to do what she liked. The first night I was tagged, D’Jorn went to the pub with mates. If she’d been tagged, that might have taught her a lesson.”

More than 7,000 parents are convicted for letting children truant every year – yet figures show the truancy rate has soared 44 per cent since 1996.

Shockingly, D’Jorn hasn’t been to school regularly since June 2009. When she first began truanting, she’d leave home wearing her uniform, then get changed and spend the day with friends. Although it’s hard to believe how any mum could not know her child was truanting, Tina is adamant she didn’t.

“I had no idea,” says Tina, who split from D’Jorn’s dad while she was pregnant. “I knew she hated school, but I didn’t think she’d stopped going. She’d come home in her uniform and pretend to be doing her homework – she even asked me to help her sometimes.

Offering yet more excuses, she adds: “Apparently the school sent letters, but D’Jorn must have intercepted them.And no one ever called me to say there was a problem.”

In November, education officers visited Tina to discuss D’Jorn’s non-attendance.

“It was a massive shock,” claims the single mum, who has three other children from two other relationships. “They told me she’d missed 90 days of school between last May and October and I had to get her to attend. I couldn’t believe it.

“When I confronted D’Jorn, she broke down and told me the teachers were always picking on her. I felt guilty I hadn’t noticed there was a problem.”

Five days later, Tina, who lives on benefits, received a court summons saying she was being prosecuted for D’Jorn’s truancy.

“I told D’Jorn she had to go to school,” Tina recalls. “I even offered her £10 a week to attend, but she refused unless she went to a new school. You can’t drag your children to school and stay there with them all day.”

Tina was tagged in January after being advised to plead guilty at a magistrates court hearing. She was also placed under a strict curfew banning her from leaving her house from 9pm to 7am.

Breaking the curfew would have landed her back in court, facing up to three months in jail.

“It was absolutely horrible,” she recalls. “Whenever people saw my tag, they looked at me in disgust. I felt like a criminal, but I’d done nothing wrong. It wasn’t my fault.”

And Tina even claims D’Jorn thought her punishment was funny, adding: “When I came home from court and told her I’d been tagged, she laughed.

“The first night of my curfew she went out. And because I was stuck inside, I couldn’t do anything to stop her.
“She couldn’t care less how her truanting affected me or her brother and sisters.”

Bizarrely, Tina also claims the 9pm curfew prevented her from keeping tabs on her other children – Tyler, six, Jordan, eight, and Paige, 12.

“One night Paige was late home from the park and I couldn’t go out looking for her,” she complains. “That was the hardest part of all. I was at home worried because she wouldn’t answer her phone. I was so angry with what they’d done to me.

“And even though I had this tag, D’Jorn still didn’t go back to school so it hasn’t worked.”

Her comments echo those of Jane Woodward – a single mum who was jailed because her son truanted from school.

Mum-of-two Jane spent three weeks behind bars for letting son Kieran, 15, miss school in Hyde, Tameside, for two years. She was freed after serving half of a six-week sentence.

“I’ve tried everything to get my son to go to school and he just refused,” says Jane. “Prison didn’t teach me anything – it was like a holiday camp to be truthful.”

Meanwhile, experts are at a loss as to how to tackle the worrying number of children regularly skipping school.
Christine Blower from the National Union of Teachers says: “There are no magic solutions to tackling hardcore truanting.

“Engaging with families whose children are persistent truants is a long, hard slog involving providing support rather than punishment.”

Tina’s tag was removed two weeks ago, but she’s been warned she could be jailed if D’Jorn doesn’t go back to school.

She’s hoping to enrol her at a new secondary school and claims D’Jorn, who regularly sees her dad, has turned her life around after the family moved to a new home eight miles away from her friends, who Tina claims were a bad influence.

“I’m lucky because she now says she wants to go to school and make a fresh start,” explains Tina. “But it’s not because of what happened to me.

“If she missed school again, I don’t know how I’d cope in jail.

“But I know it’s the children who should get punished, not the parents.

“I want the best for D’Jorn, but tagging her would teach her the consequences of her actions.

“Otherwise these children aren’t learning anything. They are still in the same routine of skiving every day. The courts have got it totally wrong.”

D’Jorn says: “I thought it was stupid when Mum was tagged, but I was glad it wasn’t me.

"I don’t really know why I didn’t go to school. But I didn’t care that it got Mum into trouble.

“I should have been tagged – but I don’t feel bad that Mum was instead.”

By Victoria Raymond