Pay Attention At The Back

Loved this brief story in today's Daily Record:

Our Prize Pupil Left In 2003

A pupil was given a prize for turning up to every lesson for a year - despite having left school four years earlier.

Education chiefs praised Stuart Fox as a model pupil and sent him a special pen and a pass allowing him to go swimming at the local pool free for a year.

But the red-faced officials were then told Stuart had moved.

Falkirk Council dish out the Present And Correct awards annually to pupils with perfect attendance.

Stuart had gone to Graeme High School in Falkirk but had moved to America with his family in 2003 when his father got a new job there.

Somehow, he had not been removed from the school roll.

And because teachers had not marked him absent, Stuart was automatically nominated for the award.

So the council education director Julia Swan wrote a letter congratulating him for his 100 percent attendance in the 2006-07 year, enclosing the pen and telling him about his grand prize of a year's free swimming.

It was only when the people who live in Stuart's old house in Polmont returned the letter that they realised the mistake.

Crikey. Dishing out an attendance prize to someone who left the country three years previously!

How easy must it be to bunk off from that school?

Obviously no requirement to dodge Wee Donny the bunking man like there was in my day...