The carrot would be a payment for attendance. I know that things have changed regarding school leaving age, but one way to keep young people in education until they are mature enough to see the point of qualifications would be to have a financial advantage attached to attendance.
I'm pleased we are agreed that beating them into submission is not the way forward though 
A financial reward for good attendance - if paid to the parents do you envisage some parents visiting violence upon the child if it has been playing truant?
Heavens, no! That is not my thinking at all. When I taught at the college a payment was made to parents (I think it was £30 a week back in the 80s, so not a token payment) in lieu of CB when their child was over 18 and in further education. Otherwise CB stopped when they left school. In order to qualify for the following term's payments they had to have more than X% (80?) attendance or it stopped. In many cases this was vital to the family budget - in others it was pocket money for the student - but either way it concentrated the mind.
I dare say some parents might use physical punishment, but that is just as likely in high income as low income families, I think. It was more about a sense of immediate responsibility, and an incentive to turn up - both for the education itself, and as an excuse to peers who might be less than encouraging.
Not all poor families live on the proceeds of crime, and by no means all crime is committed by those on low incomes . Im most cases the students I taught had failed O levels at school and were resitting in the hope of getting apprenticeships or of joining the armed forces. The girls wanted to apply for basic levels of the Civil Service (clerical assistant grade) or do office junior roles rather than work in factories. They did have aspirations, but often needed to be focussed, and to have an 'excuse' to attend. They were 16 years old - not adults, even though they saw themselves as such.
The college fostered a very different culture from most schools. It wouldn't happen now, but students were allowed to smoke, there was no separate staff canteen, so they had coffee breaks and lunch with us, and everyone was on first name terms. That sort of thing goes a long way, too. I'm not saying that smoking should be reinstated, but treating them as adults helped, as the norm for many was to leave school as soon as possible and have babies. A generation before they would have been working and contributing to the family income, so would have had adult status. They would have really resented the petty rules of many schools. That
They were working class kids from decent families whose jobs had gone because of the wholesale destruction of heavy industry. An odd one used drugs, but it was nothing like on the scale suffered by that area now, several generations of despondency and government neglect later.
Deprivation causes what you see as 'choices', people don't choose deprivation.
Germanshepherdsmum
I have no idea Doodledog. My belief is that it’s up to the individual. Everyone has the benefit of an education. All pregnant women have access to antenatal classes which include parenting skills. Everyone has access to contraception. All this has been the case for many, many years. But people simply don’t want to take advantage of these things and make the necessary effort to make their lives better than those of their parents. I wonder how many children have, this morning, had to get themselves to school (or off to play truant, getting into trouble) hungry and ill-clothed because their mothers are still lying in bed (perhaps with yet another boyfriend) and just can’t be bothered? Will those children bother to try not to repeat the pattern when they have children of their own or will they just replicate that lifestyle down the years? What do you think any government can do about this CBA attitude?
I doubt that there is a 'one size fits all' answer. All the same, I think that 'CBA' is more often 'don't see the point'.
I think that incentivising rather than penalising is always better, so maybe child benefit should be conditional on a high level of school attendance, for a start. Better still would be a reward for children with full attendance (unless they have a doctor's note), payable to the parents at the end of each term. EMA was definitely an incentive when I worked in the college. Students were very keen to get full attendance, as they would have had to answer to their parents if not. Maybe that sort of incentive could be used to encourage attendance at clinics and Sure start-type playgroups, properly staffed with people who know better than to try to make everyone share 'middle class' values. We can afford it, as was proved during Covid when billions were found to was found to make furlough payments and payments to all sorts of people who didn't deliver.
I think there should be a change to the structure of UC payments, so that there is no incentive to work fewer hours and get pay made up with credits. The best way to do this would, I think, be to boost the minimum wage so that working people don't have to claim benefits to survive, not to reduce benefits for those who need them. If people are genuinely better off in work, and have evidence of that in their pockets, maybe children will grow up in more ordered households where work is the norm. Free childcare should be available to all pre-school children, and for 5-12s there should be before and after school provision (non-means tested). That is a perfect opportunity for catch-up education to happen in a more playful environment, and also to ensure that all children get a breakfast and late afternoon meal.
I am possibly speaking out of turn here, as I've only taught in post-compulsory sectors, and I've been in universities rather than colleges for more than 25 years, but I wonder whether (if it doesn't already) teacher training should include strategies for presenting topics in ways that genuinely include all pupils, and linking attainment with what used to be called being cool. I know it's really difficult to do this without being patronising, but it's not impossible at all. Too often, being seen to be trying at school is social death, and schoolchildren are, by definition, immature, so it's asking a lot of them to expect them not to care about that. Instead of holding up university entrance as the end goal, ways should be found to make learning valued in its own right - valued by the children, not just the teachers.
I also think that there should be much more support for the sort of self-help schemes that often spring up in areas of high deprivation. People who live there should be involved in decisions about 'levelling up', rather than having initiatives imposed on them from on high. If people feel part of society they are probably more likely to work for it rather than against it.
Re drugs - that is a perennial problem, and I don't know what I think, other than there should be no obvious (or hidden for that matter) difference between the treatment of senior cabinet ministers unable to stand up straight in the HoC and young people on sink estates when it comes to possession and use of drugs. There should be a lot more help for people with addictions, whether to alcohol or drugs, and work should be done to destigmatise it. That could be paid for from the tax on alcohol and cigarettes, and there would be change left over for childcare schemes!
Will that do for starters?
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