This article was originally published on 30 November 2022

One of the most interesting aspects of behaviour in schools is the extent to which teachers often see similar problems at the same time, despite their schools being at opposite ends of the country, with vastly different intakes, in entirely different communities.

Recently, one such problem seems to be internal truancy - pupils going absent from lessons without authorisation, but remaining on the school site.

I’ve lost count of the amount of tweets I’ve seen in the past few weeks with teachers and school leaders sharing their collective exasperation at the sudden peak in these incidents.

Internal truancy isn’t a new issue in schools; any pastoral leader will tell you that. But, recently, it seems as though this is becoming far more frequent, and far more complicated. 

We’ve all dealt with students not wanting to attend a particular lesson for a particular reason. Often, the barriers here are easy to resolve. It may be a friendship issue, a learning issue, or a confidence issue. They’re easy fixes, working with the child to understand their concerns and then addressing them together.

But what happens when internal truancy happens on a wider scale? What do you do when it’s not one student, but packs of them? What do you do when the issues are more complex?

Internal truancy: what can schools do?

Firstly, the problem needs to be tackled through a robust, whole-school approach. There needs to be a quick and simple way for teachers to flag students who are missing from class to get an immediate response.

The key here is in having an internal management information system that has the functionality for staff to quickly and accurately record this, and to send instant notifications to other members of staff. This means leaders can respond quickly once an incident is recorded. These systems also allow you to track incidents across the school, so they can reveal wider patterns, which can help inform how you approach the issue.

Secondly, there needs to be a significant and visible staff presence in school corridors at key points, such as lesson changeovers and returning to lessons after break and lunch times. Students should not be able to roam freely in empty corridors. School leaders will need to inject capacity here if they’re going to solve the problem. 

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Alongside this, it’s vital that there is a robust and instant consequence for internal truancy. For a number of children, the knowledge that an action will have a consequence will act as enough of a deterrent. This might be an instant sanction, such as loss of social time or an internal suspension. 

You need to be consistent here, but blanket sanctions do need careful thought. If students are skipping lessons because they do not want to be in them, removing them from circulation may be playing directly into their hands. An important part of this process lies in the relationships you have with those students and your ability to understand their motivations behind truancy. That way, you can use a more targeted, tailored response that allows there to be a consequence that works most effectively as a deterrent.

In order to create a meaningful deterrent that works for the vast majority of students, a school must create certainty; it is certainty of consequence that discourages them from acting. 

Once you have minimised numbers through this initial deterrent, you can then deal with those students who have more complex issues and higher needs, requiring more tailored support.

To implement this approach, I’d recommend leaders use the following checklist...

Amy Forrester is an English teacher and director of behaviour and futures at Cockermouth School in Cumbria

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