A mother has been jailed for nine weeks after her 13-year-old son attended 31 out of 205 school sessions between last September and this February.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, reportedly wept as the sentence was handed down and she was taken to the cells.
Prosecuting on behalf of the council, Felicity Lewis said the education welfare service had worked with the defendant since 2010, the South Wales Evening Post reported.
And the council had arranged a daily pick-up and drop-off service, but often the mother was still in bed when they arrived and the child not ready for school, the paper added.
Home tuition for the child was then organised. However, there were just three sessions in the first month due to problems arranging them with the defendant.
Defending, Mark Davies told magistrates the boy was “very polite, presentable, engaging, clean and tidy”.
He added the mother – who already had a suspended sentence for another matter – was “not strong enough” to make sure he went to school.
A spokeswoman for the council told Sky News that prosecutions in such cases were only used as a “last resort”.
“In these cases it’s for the court to decide whether parents have failed in their responsibilities and what the appropriate penalty should be,” she said.
“Good attendance is vital so that children can learn, develop their social and life skills and fulfil their potential.
“Parents have a clear, legal responsibility to ensure that their children attend school.
“Schools and local authority support services work closely together to support any parents who have genuine difficulty in getting their children to school.”
And she said school attendance in Swansea had risen significantly over the past year as a result of the “real efforts of both parents and schools”.
Swansea Mother Jailed Over Son's Truancy
No comments:
Post a Comment