Can the parents be prosecuted for truancy if a child bunks off year 7 classes to attend year 11 classes

[GPT3]

If a child thinks that her schoolwork is ‘too easy’ and persistently walks into year 11 classes instead of the year 7 classes that she is supposed to attend, is that legally classified as truancy?

If you are using SIMS, yes you can.

I was caned at school when in 2nd year (Y8 these days) for internal truancy - was going through a shit time at home and just wanted some time on my own, so hid in the school toilets rather than going to German.

I swapped around my timetable, though there was lots of lying involved and I got into trouble once. I'd swap my maths class for a friend's English class, but we were the same year. I also swapped the opposite way from Y10 P.E for Y7 Textiles and would basically work as a TA in those classes. I can't imagine a diddy little year 7 swanning into a Y11 class though.

This is what I thought.

If this is your kid OP then encourage them academically at home, do sports, music etc with them.

Let them be 11 at school and be with kids their age.

That was clever! What year was this?

Just how big is this imaginary secondary school?

The year 11s will have been at the school 5 years, by that point plenty of teachers will recognise their faces and may have taught their class before. They are certainly going to notice a random child just popping up who looks 5 years younger than the rest of the class.

If you think your child is a genius you have a few options:

You can talk about skipping the child to the year ahead but I think you would have to sufficiently prove that they hadn't missed fundamental knowledge that they need to build on, and the school still might not facilitate this

You can tell the child to work on their behaviour skills as they are apparently not very advanced. Being able to sit and take in information that you personally find boring is actually a very valuable life skills. No one who works wants to sit through yet another CBT on GDPR or information security yet many have to, so its actually a relevant thing to learn. You can then provide external coaching in subjects they want to stretch themselves in outside of school, there are free resources as well as paid ones.

You can home school

You can change schools to one with a more academically challenging environment, if your child really is a child genius then private schools may be able to over scholarships or bursaries to cover the cost of some or most of the fees

If the child really is that clever and really does exist

There’s no way a yr7 would swan into a year 11 class 🤣

Unless they have absolutely zero self awareness? The teacher wouldn’t allow it either.

Sounds like someone wants to be Matilda

Why do you think this could possibly work? The Y11 teacher would tell the young child to get out of their classroom.

No SIMS register I've ever taken has an option of easily adding a wayward y7 into a y11 class - yes you can mark the y7 separately as 'present' but only in their original class. And by the time you'd even finished that I'd be raising merry hell about why some self-important y7 had decided to crash my y11 class, causing all sorts of disruption, I'd be calling for year team support and expecting to hear about the consequences/discipline doled out. Internal truancy, disobedience, not following instructions.

You can add a random student to a SIMS register, no idea why you would though, you’d just send them back to their timetabled class.

If yr7 child is confident enough to walk into the class full of children 5 years older, that's kind of amazing. And able to figure out the timetable for yr11 and persistently walk into their class, even more so.
You have an amazing genius child who have maturity and confidence that matches her brain. Congrats!

Op not been back? Quelle surprise.

It wouldn't be truancy but it would be failing to attend the lessons she was meant to be in and she would be sanctioned in line with the school policy. Essentially she is not following instructions and is disrupting other children's classes.

I don't believe that happens. The year 11 teacher would just send them back.

No because that would be classed as things that never happened so no truancy fine would be due

Not being in class when they should be, is not being in class.
It doesn’t matter where they are.

Sounds like your kid has been bunking off school and has spun you a lie that it’s because they attend a different class and it’s the schools fault for being boring.

This would never happen.

When you do the register you mark down who’s present and who’s not - this automatically goes to attendance and if a child hadn’t turned up they will look for them and ring home (I’m assuming that’s what’s happened here).

It is not possible to randomly join a class as the teacher will recognise you and know straight away you’re not in that class.
There is also a big difference in appearance in a year 7 and year 11, no matter how big or small you are.

You will not get prosecuted but you probably will have to have a meeting to understand why she might be truanting and if there are any issues.

They are being a brat and also disruptive to the year 11 learners who are studying for exams

Well a supply teacher might not know. The register shows you who is not there from your list, you might not know that there is someone extra (and in some schools you get lots of new arrivals who you might not recognise, and might think it rude to ask if they're too young!) But most likely if this has been happening the child has been hiding in the class somewhere.

Yes, this. A quick search of OP brings up one other thread, "I think my 15 month old is ready for potty training"....genius children indeed....

Someone has been watching too much "Young Sheldon" 🙄

I suppose op's dd could be Alicia from Malory Towers tricking Mam'zelle Dupont?

@TugboatAnnie Ha! And when Mam’zelle says “oo is zat small child over zere?” the rest of the class all look around in an exaggerated way and say “which child? Where? Why, Mam’zelle, there’s nobody here, you must have a fever!”

Unlikely! Plus when the On Call team go looking for little Persephone, they'll find her....

Zut alors! But of course!

I mean technically its possible a supply teacher wouldn't notice an extra very young pupil. But that also relies on a load of year 11s also not noticing someone new in their class, or not speaking up about it which seems highly unlikely (yet still not as unlikely as the Ops scenario 😁)

I'm liking your option of the child hiding in the classroom, and the science teacher suddenly opening a cupboard to find a year 7 in there instead of bunsen burners 😅