MY CRAZY MEDIA LIFE
PROGRAMME 3: NOT ONE OF THE GANG
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Bullying and beyond
Recent research has shown that bullying is a major concern among young people, and that in some communities they have to be prepared to deal with more serious incidents involving weapons, particularly knives. Large inner-city estates present a particular problem.
Speculation and reality
Care needs to be taken when speculating about levels of violence among young people without any hard reliable evidence to back up conclusions. National averages can be misleading because they underestimate pockets of extreme violence around the country. Under-reporting of crime among this age group further blurs the picture. Statistics taken out of context and used in sensational media reports also skew the picture, contributing to negative impressions of young people in society at large. There is, therefore, a need for good research and statistics before judgements can be made about levels of violence in any one area and appropriate responses devised.
Young fear
Research findings continually suggest that young people as a group are most feared by people of all ages in our society, yet they are the group most often victimised and least likely to report crime or be taken seriously.
Blade availability
Concern about violent crime in Britain has swung back to knives and how readily available they are to children and young people. A recent Trading Standards Institute report found almost half the shops in their sample broke the law by selling knives to young people under the age of 16. The situation has been made worse in recent years because knives can be purchased with relative anonymity over the internet.
Rising knife culture?
It is often asked, are we are really witnessing a rise in so-called knife culture or is recent coverage of the issue in newspapers mere hysteria? According to the Home Office, the number of people convicted of carrying a blade in public was 2,559 in 1991 and 3,570 in the year 2000. There are those who see the increase in convictions in terms of the success of crackdown operations and not in terms of a higher incidence of knife carrying. Meanwhile, Accident & Emergency departments in hospitals in some parts of the country are reporting an increase in stab wounds that are not reported to the police. The Youth Justice Board recently found that carrying a knife was the most common offence among young people excluded from school, and they identified availability and ease of use as a problem. The situation is further confused by inconsistencies relating to government 'lock-up' and 'rehab' policies and media reporting of the same.
School attendance
Acording to the DfES's TeacherNet website (see Links):
'Parents have the primary responsibility for ensuring that children of compulsory school age (i.e. 5 to 16 year olds) receive a suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise. It is the responsibility of the Local Education Authority to ensure that parents meet these responsibilities. Attendance enforcement is usually carried out by the LEA Education Welfare Service who provide an important link between schools and families.
'Head teachers are required to tell the LEA if a pupil fails to attend regularly or has been absent for a continuous period of ten days and the absence is treated as unauthorised. Heads can, of course, notify the LEA earlier if there are areas of concern.
'…There are many reasons why pupils miss school without permission. Consequently, there is no one solution to the problem of absenteeism. Head teachers should consider the initiative that is best for their school, taking into account the pupils individual circumstances. For example setting reward schemes, such as certificates, school trips and breakfast clubs.'
The law and attendance
If a child fails to attend school regularly, their parent or carer is breaking the law and could be fined up to £2,500, undergo a jail sentence of up to three months or be given a community sentence. A parenting contract can be drawn up between the parent or carer and the school with the aim of helping the young person attend school regularly. This requires the parent or carer to comply with certain requirements.
In 2001, Patricia Amos was jailed for 60 days (reduced to 28) because her teenage daughters missed so much school. She was the first parent to be jailed for this reason. For her daughter, Emma, it was a wake-up call. With the help of Connexions, she turned her life around, and in 2005 was given a star-student award at her college in Banbury.
