Benefits cut for truant families
New law aims to toughen up financial sanctions for parents who allow their children to repeatedly miss school
PARENTS whose children repeatedly skip school face tougher sanctions including an automatic cut to their benefits under a new law.
Nicolas Sarkozy has announced the plans to toughen up an existing law from 2006 which he said was not working.
At the moment, the law allows for a departmental council to call parents of persistent truants to a meeting where a "parental responsibility contract" is drawn up.
However Education Minister Luc Chatel revealed earlier this year that only "a few dozen" contracts have been signed since 2006, all of them in the Alpes-Maritimes.
The new law will be submitted to the National Assembly next week. A pupil absent from school for more than four half-days in a month without justification will receive a warning letter at home.
The headteacher will pass details on to the local inspecteur d'académie who will arrange a meeting.
The local education authority will have the power to ask the Caisse d'Allocations Familiales to cut off benefits if the parents fail to attend the meeting.
School inspectors' union SIA said the law could not be allowed to go through because it would leave some families in poverty.
Teachers' union Unsa said the idea was "ineffective and discriminatory". It added: "A complicated problem will not be resolved by a simplistic measure like this."
