Letter: Truant fines will hit poor

'Higher fines if children play truant' will only serve to make matters worse for poor families.

People can send their children off to school before going to work, but if the kids don't arrive there, how can parents be responsible?

OK, stay at home, on the dole to ensure children arrive at school and then be accused of being benefit cheats?

Many children attend school every day but leave at 16 totally illiterate, so how can education, recently diminished by use of teaching assistants to save money, be of any use to them?

And Mr Gove saying that truanting children caused the riots 'because they weren't in school' begs the question, why is there no disorder during holiday times?

No, as usual wealthy upper class twits, some of whose children rioted, who take their families out of school to go on extended holidays without penalty, seek scapegoats for their ineptitude in running the country, and the poor underclass will do nicely because they cannot answer back, having no public school education or plummy 'do as I say, not as I do, authoritarian voices.

WF Kerswell

Picklescott