Instructions:Take it in turns to throw the dice and move your counter around the table.

Topic square – talk about the topic question for 30 seconds. (1 point)

Argue square - Have a 40-second conversation with the last partner disagreeing about the topic they just presented.

(1 point each). At the end, the player with the most points is the winner.

Section 4. Have Your Say

What will stop the rise in truancy?

The truancy rate in primary schools has risen by 7 per cent, despite the Government efforts to reduce the number of unauthorised absences. Parents of persistent truants are to be given 12 weeks to improve their children's attendance or face automatic prosecution and a fine of £50.

Is this the best way to deal with truancy? Comments

1.Elizabeth Philips. Cane the truants, it worked in the old days.

2.Bob Finbow. In a word - fear. Truant officers should track them down wherever they are, be it at home, on the street of in amusement arcades, drag them off to the local police station or some other secure place, and lock them up, alone, with nothing to play with and no food and leave them there all day. In the evening they can leave if their parents come to pick them up, otherwise feed them bread and water and leave them there. The sheer bordom of having no-one to interact with should bring home the benefits of attending school classes.

3.Ragnar Vagmornasson When I was at school in the 60s and 70s, I came home and saw that both my parents had well-paying jobs that were secure. Something to aim for, a REASON to follow in their educational footsteps. What example do school children see nowdays? Minimum wage jobs that are as secure as a chocolate tea pot. Jobs where it does not matter if you have left school with nothing, or with 16 A levels; it does NOT improve your chances of getting, or keeping a decent job, or advancement within that job. You are not even sure if you will still be in the job in six months time. Why bother with school?

4.Lance Oyston I recently retired from the police service and was involved with the Government's £900 million initiative. My opinion? A waste of time. Yes, truants were picked up and reported to school or taken back to school, yes we heard the same lame excuses from their parents who were with them when they were stopped by me and an education welfare officer. "Jonny had a headache today so I kept him off school", "I have brought Mary with me to the market to buy her a new skirt for school", etc, etc. Collusion by the parents self evidently. But very much like other headline-grabbing initiatives, it never addressed the root causes which are wide ranging, from parents not valuing education, poor schools and teaching, lack of role models and so on. The main responsibility has to focus on the schools keeping tabs on their pupils and making their schools and teaching inspirational so that children want to go there and learn. Measures focussing on their feckless parents are doomed, I fear.

5.Sarah Hague. £900million is a lot of money. Where has it gone? Why does no one ask this question? What exactly has been bought for £900 million relating to truancy? This goverment seems to have a knack at throwing huge sums of money uselessly at problems and, far from improving them, just sees them getting worse. The root causes of truancy need to be addressed, including poor teaching, feelings of inadequacy, isolation, bullying, relevance of teaching, home life problems and so on. Just give me £900 million and I'll come up with something viable, I'm sure. I would have thought that positive reinforcement would be better than the stick. Raymon Lock the school gates - and keep them closed until it is time to go home. We should also give them back their playing fields - give them something to do in their spare time and it will stop them annoying everyone else.

6.Vinay Mehra Children who are truant occasionally should be disciplined and their parents fined. The chances are that these children would improve. However, the ones who are truant regularly pose a bigger problem. They and their parents do not see any value in schooling. They look up to footballers, pop singers and reality TV participants to see that it is possible to earn obscene amounts of money while ridiculing schools. Perhaps, such students should be removed from main stream schooling, so that they cannot disrupt the other pupils, and allowed to play football or other sports and be creative in pop music or other performing arts.

7.Malcolm McLean A school can very easily stop truancy by simply not tolerating it. If the child fails to attend for registration, a phone call can be made to the parents as a matter of course. If the parents collude in the truancy, which can usually be detected quite easily, they are taken to court. Children may take a day off for a prank, which is relatively harmless, but they do not have the resources or the will to resist determined authority in a systematic way.

Section 5. Picture Короткий разговор.

UNIT 13

Section 1. Практикум Линн Виссон

Текст 24

Интервью с Андреем Маковым о Малевиче