Jail parents of truants, says Iemma

EDUCATION and welfare experts have ridiculed Morris Iemma's plan to send parents to jail if their children repeatedly miss school, saying the policy is "heavy-handed" and will only hurt the most disadvantaged students.

Primary school principals backed the Premier's move yesterday but the Federation of Parents and Citizens' Associations attacked it and Tony Vinson - who has spent 30 years researching education and disadvantage - said it could do more harm than good.

"It is impossible for me to see how a threat like this is going to enhance the life prospects of a child," Professor Vinson said.

Gloria Larman, the chief executive of Shine for Kids, a support group for the children of prisoners, said: "Children with a parent in jail are five times more likely than an average child to end up in jail themselves. Are they going to send the minister for community services to jail because he is the legal guardian of many kids that don't go to school?"

Mr Iemma revealed he would strengthen Education Department powers to allow it to seek court orders to force a parent to enrol their child in school. If parents disobeyed, they could face jail.

"We're not talking about kids that wag the odd day," Mr Iemma told Parliament. But "if counselling, mediation and second chances" did not work, the next step for parents could be prison.

"Schools will now have the support they need to get their students back into class, where they belong, where they can be protected and where they can develop and thrive," he said.

When pressed on how the laws would work? Which of two parents might be found culpable and sent to jail? Might both parents be jailed? If so, who would be left at home to ensure the child was sent to school?

A spokesman for the Education Minister, John Della Bosca, said it would be "highly unlikely" that both parents would be jailed because "there are significant therapeutic options for the courts" and it was probable that care orders would already be in place requiring the child to be looked after by someone else.

The Opposition said it would hit the disadvantaged, especially Aborigines, and that the Government should enforce existing laws on truancy. Mr Della Bosca's spokesman said 34 parents had been fined between $200 and $1100 over truancy, but it was expected prosecutions would rise to about 250 under the new laws.

The president of the NSW Primary Principals' Association, Geoff Scott, said jail would be the only deterrent for some parents.

"Certainly you don't want to be sending parents to jail but that is way down the track. But it's really something we support because we know that kids will succeed best if they come to school."

Mr Scott said most schools would have a child who needed to be rescued from truancy.

But Andrew McCallum, chief executive of the Association of Childrens Welfare Agencies, said it would only worsen the problem of disadvantage. "Truancy is a social problem and it won't be attacked by heavy-handedness."

Last year the Education Department admitted that seven-year-old Shellay Ward, who was found dead at Hawks Nest in November, had never attended school. It had put various options to her parents, it said, but none was accepted.

The new law will allow independent medical experts to assess if a child is "too sick" to be enrolled rather than taking the word of parents. It will give extra protection to people such as neighbours who report chronic truancy.

The president of the P&C federation, Dianne Giblin, urged the Government to focus on better co-operation between its agencies, including Health and the Department of Community Services.