Benefits cut warning over truancy

9 September 2011 Last updated at 06:26 ET

David Cameron believes education makes people ‘good citizens’

Parents of children in England who regularly truant could have their benefits cut, the Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

The government’s social policy review, set up in the wake of the recent riots, has been asked to consider it, he said in a speech about education on Friday.

Discipline and rigour were needed to mend a “broken society”, he said.

And parents needed to know there were consequences to their inactions, he added.

Mr Cameron said discipline needed to be restored in schools, and teachers and heads were being given the tools to do this.

‘Respect’

He added: “But restoring discipline is also about what parents do. We need parents to have a real stake in the discipline of their children, to face real consequences if their children continually misbehave.

“That’s why I have asked our social policy review to look into whether we should cut the benefits of those parents whose children constantly play truant.

“Yes, this would be a tough measure – but we urgently need to restore order and respect in the classroom and I don’t want ideas like this to be off the table.”

Mr Cameron made the comments at the opening of one of England’s first free schools, the Norwich Free School.

He said he wanted to see schools like it “replicated many, many times up and down the country”.

Critics have called free schools, which are state-funded but privately run, socially divisive and unaccountable.

The schools tend to be set up by parents, teachers, faith groups and other organisations.

‘Intolerance of failure’

Some Lib Dems have opposed free schools amid fears they could be socially divisive, but Mr Cameron will state that both parties are behind the scheme.

“A free school is born of a real passion for education – a belief in its power to change lives.

“It’s a passion and a belief this coalition shares. We want to want to create an education system based on real excellence, with a complete intolerance of failure,” he said.

Twenty-four out of the first wave of free schools are opening this term.

They operate as academies, and like them, do not have to follow the national curriculum, can vary the pay and conditions of teachers, are directly funded by central government and are outside of local authority control.

The government says free schools will meet parental demand in areas where there is a shortage of places and help drive up standards by providing competition.

But critics argue they will take pupils and money from other schools at a time of cutbacks and could break up the state education system.

Of the 24 free schools opening this month, nine are faith-based or have strong religious ethos, six are parent- or teacher-led and five will be run by trusts already running academies.

Mr Cameron also said that classroom reforms were required to produce a new generation of “good citizens”.

He said: “We’ve got to be ambitious if we want to compete in the world. When China is going through an educational renaissance, when India is churning out science graduates any complacency now would be fatal for our prosperity.

“And we’ve got to be ambitious, too, if we want to mend our broken society.

“Because education doesn’t just give people the tools to make a good living – it gives them the character to live a good life, to be good citizens.”

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