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classroom empty with alarm clock floating and slightly odd eerie colours, it's desaturated
Lots of students rely on alarms to get to school on time (Getty Images / Bianca Cross)

OPINIONPoliticsNovember 21, 2022

The truth about school principals and student attendance

classroom empty with alarm clock floating and slightly odd eerie colours, it's desaturated
Lots of students rely on alarms to get to school on time (Getty Images / Bianca Cross)

Christopher Luxon appears to understand neither attendance data nor what actually works to get students into school, writes educator Traci Liddall.

Who’s to blame for increasing truancy? At least partly, it’s principals who aren’t focused on getting kids into the classroom, according to National Party leader Christopher Luxon. His argument is being backed up by Act’s David Seymour, who last week added a jab at “absolutely hopeless” school principals for good measure.

For those of us who have been in education for more than five minutes it’s no surprise to hear this rhetoric. Over the last decade, teachers, principals and the schools where they work have been increasingly blamed for society’s ills. Once upon a time a teacher could sit all day at their desk, cane in one hand, a lit cigarette hanging out the window in the other, down a few pints at the pub at 3, be home by 5, and still be respected as a pillar of the community. These days a 10+ hour work day is the norm, with a recent report showing that 69.6% of New Zealand primary school leaders and 82% of New Zealand secondary school leaders are working between 50 and 65 hours per week.

School teachers and principals are forced to be everything to everyone (Illustration from The Side Eye by Toby Morris)

So let’s start with the numbers. Luxon said that according to recently released data less than 40% of students are attending school regularly. The report can be read here. What he didn’t explain is exactly what “regularly” means in this context. In Ministry of Education terms, a student is deemed to attend “regularly” if they are at school 91-100% of the time it is open for instruction. That means in a 10 week term of 50 days, the maximum number of days a student can be absent and still be considered to be attending regularly is four. Staying home sick is considered an absence. Attending a tangi is considered an absence. When I look back on what a terrible time schools had in term two this year with Covid, including rostering home year levels because of sick teachers, I’m surprised the attendance level is as high as 40%.

According to that same report, 71.2% of students attended 81% or more of the time (or more than 41 days out of 50). My two step daughters fit into this box. They both had Covid in term two and were also affected by year level rolling stay-at-home orders due to staffing difficulties. They are both diligent and studious and their dad knocks on their bedroom door to rouse them from slumber at seven each morning – but according to some of the comments made recently by these politicians, these two young women are “truants”, another problem that principals need to tackle.

There is actually no data for truancy in the attendance report Luxon quoted from. The most I could find was the percentage of term time wasted with unjustified absences. Without the raw data it is impossible to extrapolate the number of students this refers to nor which band of attendance they fit into. So it is hard to understand just what Luxon meant. That those who were not regular attenders were truant?

It’s just not true that principals aren’t paying attention to who is and isn’t in school (Photo: Getty Images)

This is not to say that attendance isn’t something that plays heavily on the minds of all principals. Of course it does. The evidence clearly shows that attendance below 91% negatively affects learning – and we want all of our students to succeed. If a student is absent and the school has not been notified, then an attempt is made to contact home. Sometimes by automated text, email or phone call, sometimes all of the above. This becomes escalated the longer a student remains absent without notifying the school. Schools keep much more detailed data and know who the students are and trends around absences.

Healthy lunches in schools have helped. Fewer children are kept home to cover the whakamā of having no food. Period products in schools have helped. Girls who have free and easy access to pads and tampons (and, where possible, new undies and brown paper bags) are more likely to come to school. Funding given directly to schools for targeted attendance programmes to fit their own unique circumstances has helped.

Addressing the why alongside the what – such as having someone employed in small communities who is able to quietly and respectfully provide school uniform, learning materials, food, even bedding and curtains – has helped. Having flexible teaching and learning models to accommodate students who have responsibilities outside of school such as care of family members or work have helped.

Interestingly, none of these options have reduced the amount of time some higher decile students spend absent on overseas holidays, and it’s not rocket science as to why.

Unfortunately the restraints and challenges with attendance are the same as they have always been. It always comes down to money. In the absence of an effective truancy service this has fallen back on schools and principals to deliver. And in some schools the money marmite is already spread pretty thin. If more money is spent on attendance, less will be spent elsewhere. That is basic economics, and something I would have hoped a great business mind like Christopher Luxon would understand.

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Animation: Tina Tiller
Animation: Tina Tiller

PoliticsNovember 19, 2022

Tuvalu is sinking into the cloud

Animation: Tina Tiller
Animation: Tina Tiller

The small cluster of islands is sinking, and plans are now underway to recreate the country in the cloud before it disappears entirely.

For a safety-minded first-time traveller to Funafuti International Airport in Tuvalu, one of the more bizarre and harrowing sights from an airplane circling to land used to be watching tiny dots scurrying below, clearing the 1.5km runway of soccer balls, clothing, children and stray dogs.

But now Tuvalu is proposing to offer an even bleaker bird’s eye view of itself, by recreating it somewhere in the metaverse.  It’s bleak because Tuvalu is already preparing for the day when it won’t physically exist.

Tuvalu, which is located about 1200km directly north of Fiji, has again captured the world’s attention, this time at the climate change conference Cop27 in Egypt. Last year it produced a viral video of foreign affairs minister Simon Kofe speaking at a podium, flanked by national flags. By the end of the video it’s revealed that Kofe is standing knee-deep in the sea on what used to be land.

This time it’s a spine-chilling short film of the same minister speaking on an island that, he explains, will be one of the first spots in Tuvalu to vanish as a result of sea level rise.

“Since COP26 the world has not acted and so we in the Pacific have had to act … As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation,” says Kofe in the video.

As the camera slowly zooms out, offering a wider shot, we realise the island has been recreated digitally.

“Our land, our ocean, our culture are the most precious assets of our people and to keep them safe from harm, no matter what happens in the physical world, we’ll move them to the cloud.” 

Simon Kofe, Tuvaluan minister for justice, communication and foreign affairs, addresses COP26

It’s an uncomfortable watch. You don’t know whether to marvel at the innovation or despair at the world’s potential failure to save a country that will be overwhelmed by the excesses of developed nations.

Tuvalu – which means a cluster of eight (valu) standing together (tu), referring to the country’s eight inhabited islands – only became an independent sovereign state in 1978, after being in Great Britain’s “sphere of influence” for more than 100 years.

Previously Tuvalu was known as Ellice Islands, named after the English MP for Coventry Edward Ellice, who was also a director in the New Zealand Company in the early 1800s.  New Zealanders will be familiar with the company’s colonisation work which resulted in establishing settlements in Wellington, Nelson, Whanganui and Dunedin, along with some involvement in settling New Plymouth and Christchurch.

Ellice was also the co-owner of sugar estates and was compensated about £35,000 in the 1830s for the liberation of over 300 slaves when the British abolished slavery.  Ellice died in 1863, the same year Peruvian slave ships kidnapped more than 400 Tuvaluans to work in South America.  Almost 80% of the population of the Tuvalu island of Nukulaelae were enslaved during those raids.

So Tuvalu knows only too well the devastating impact that so-called “civilised nations” from afar can have on the 26 square kilometres of land that is currently home for its 12,000 citizens. But this time it’s their very existence as a nation that’s being threatened.

It’s predicted that Tuvalu will become uninhabitable within 50-100 years. Some older generation Tuvaluans say they will go down with the land. 

But Tuvalu is taking a worst-case scenario approach and considering all options for the future.  While it hasn’t yet purchased land in Fiji to relocate some of the population as Kiribati has done, they’re exploring legal avenues to retain ownership of maritime zones and statehood under international law.  

Undoubtedly civil servants in Canberra and Wellington are also busily considering policy responses for dealing with potential climate change refugees from Tuvalu, as well as Tokelau, Kiribati and other low-lying Pacific islands.  New Zealand is already home to about 5,000 Tuvaluans.

A suggestion by former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd that Tuvaluans could be offered full Australian citizenship in exchange for their maritime and fisheries rights was dismissed by Tuvalu as “imperial thinking”.  Behind closed doors, Tuvaluans probably had a few less diplomatic ideas about where Rudd could put his suggestion.

One ironic wrinkle in the concept of an augmented and virtual reality digital nation, is that Tuvalu doesn’t own the country-code domain .tv as it was sold to Verisign (the company that runs .com) for USD$50m in 2000. 

Tuvalu could follow Niue’s lead and try to reclaim its domain.  Niue signed away the rights to .nu in 2003 for the promise of free unlimited internet access and wifi but is now wanting it returned. Currently in internet sector circles there’s an ongoing debate about the future of .tv if the country doesn’t exist – should .tv follow Tuvalu to its “watery grave”?

If Tuvalu has its way, nothing will happen to .tv as its nationhood will remain intact, with its culture and values enshrined in a digital twin housed somewhere in the cloud.

But wait there's more!