Educational Games to Attract Truants Rather than Treats
By Alistair Owens www.keen2learn.co.uk
The number of children missing effective education is a growing concern. Schemes to punish parents of truanting children failed and the cost of rounding them up a costly game. A new approach is, however, proving to work. But is it just treating the symptoms and not finding the cure?
Some children rebel against authority, struggle with lessons and drop out of contention in the schooling process. Things can mount up pretty quickly and any enthusiasm for education wanes. School becomes the nightmare to be avoided. Some kids just switch off.
Threats, fines and punishment have minimal effect and a costly option to administer. But a novel scheme that rewards attendance and effort is making a difference. Not a new idea, I can recall similar concepts way back, but the application has been brought up to date. Having launched the scheme through local authorities it attracted criticism that the rewards took to long to arrive. Now handled by a third party the rewards are timely, achieving the objective and luring a percentage of truants back.
These red letter days offer an incentive to many kids, but deep down it is treating a symptom not curing the problem. If school was seen to proffering more educational games in the content and made to be more fun in the first place the engagement of kids in class would be much higher and the level of truancy reduced. The funds required to support the rewards scheme could be invested in the cure rather than the treats.
