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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri

Time: 11:43 am

Results for schools (scotland)

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Author: Smith, David J.

Title: School Experiences and Delinquency at Ages 13 to 16

Summary: This briefing paper presents evidence from the Edinburgh Study on the relationship between experiences at school and delinquency in young people aged between 13 and 16. The report examines the links between various aspects of school experience, including commitment to school, attachment to teachers, experience of truancy and exclusion and involvement in bullying, and misbehaviour at school and other forms of delinquency. It draws on findings from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a longitudinal research programme exploring pathways into and out of offending among a single cohort of young people who started secondary school in the City of Edinburgh in 1998. Questions about school were included in questionnaires completed by the young people at four of the annual sweeps, at ages 13, 15, 16 and 17. This report focuses on sweeps 2, 4 and 5 because by sweep 6 half of the cohort had left school. In addition, it makes use of school records of attendance and exclusion from school. The key findings are as follows: Attachment to school is related to young people’s behaviour in school and more widely to delinquent and criminal conduct. The most important dimension is attachment to teachers, but the belief that school success will bring later rewards is also important. Parents’ commitment to school is related to their children’s behaviour, including both misbehaviour in school and criminal conduct. Misbehaviour at school was clearly related to exclusion, but was a rather small part of the explanation for it. Truancy and delinquency were only weakly related to exclusion. Given their levels of bad behaviour in school, delinquency, and truancy, boys and those from working class or unemployed households were substantially more likely to have been excluded from school than girls and those from non-manual households. Analysis of the change in behaviour of people between the ages of 13 and 15 has shown that attachment to teachers at age 13 was related to lower levels of misbehaviour and delinquency at age 15, after controlling for social and family background. This indicates that there is a role for schools in preventing the development of delinquent behaviour. Analysis of behaviour change also found that misbehaviour at school at age 13 was related to an increase in delinquency over the following two years. This shows that controlling misbehaviour in school is important because, along with a range of other factors, such misbehaviour tends to lead to later criminal conduct.

Details: Edinburgh, Scotland: Centre for Law and Society, The University of Edinburgh, 2006. 20p.

Source: The Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, Report No. 13: Internet Resource: Accessed July 18, 2012 at http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/cls/esytc/findings/digest13.pdf

Year: 2006

Country: United Kingdom

URL: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/cls/esytc/findings/digest13.pdf

Shelf Number: 102905

Keywords:
Juvenile Delinquency (Scotland)
Juvenile Offenders (Scotland)
Schools (Scotland)