Bunking Off Again

I blogged some time ago about the difficult task of sentencing a parent (almost invariably a woman) for her child's failure to attend school. The posts are here and here.

The local Council has provided my court with an aide-memoire that details the steps that lead to prosecution, but also includes the following:-

Erratic or non-school attenders are two-thirds more likely to commit crime or become the victims of crime. This includes very young children where attendance patterns are set for the remainder of their compulsory education.
Erratic or non-school attenders have less than a ten per cent chance of achieving five good (grades A-C) GCSEs

Makes you think, doesn't it?