This article was originally published in July 2017.
The Life Course Centre is proud to announce that our ABILITY School Engagement Program Trial (ASEP Trial) team, which includes Professor Lorraine Mazerolle, Dr Sarah Bennett, Dr Emma Antrobus and Dr Elizabeth Eggins, will receive the outstanding experimental field trial award by Division of Experimental Criminology of the American Society of Criminology in November 2017.
This award recognises a single research project or program that contributes significantly to criminological research and experimental science.
The team undertook a randomised trial research project testing the impacts of a collaborative, police–school partnership approach to reducing truancy and increasing students’ willingness to attend school.
Skipping school can become a major social issue, linked throughout the life course to poor educational outcomes, drug and alcohol abuse, and antisocial behaviour. It has been found that if you reduce truancy you can reduce instances of young people offending. It is important, then, to ensure children stay at school, but to achieve this they must be willing to attend school in the first place. This study reports on a range of collaborative interventions, using police–school partnerships.
Interventions included using school-based police officers, introducing programs rewarding good attendance, and other community-based interventions.
Using school attendance and students’ self-reported survey data, the team found that the police–school partnership intervention shows promise in achieving the desired outcomes – reducing truancy, and improving students’ willingness to attend school. They concluded that police–school partnerships that foster the willingness of young people to attend school should be examined in future research and these partnerships be considered in the development of truancy prevention programs.
Recent publications for this trial can be found here:
- Reducing Truancy and Fostering a Willingness to Attend School: Results from a Randomized Trial of a Police-School Partnership Program
- Truancy Intervention Reduces Crime: Results from a Randomized Field Trial
- The Coproduction of Truancy Control: Results from a Randomized Trial of a Police–Schools Partnership Program.