Parents could face prosecution if their children are unjustifiably out of school, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin.
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The ‘star’ scheme
David Seymour is on a warpath against truancy. The associate education minister warned parents could face prosecution if their children are unjustifiably out of school as part of a new education policy unveiled by the government yesterday. As reported by the Herald, the new “star” scheme – meaning Stepped Attendance Response – will place obligations on parents and schools to ensure children attend classes regularly. “Any student who reaches a clearly defined threshold of days absent will trigger an appropriate and proportionate response from their school and the ministry,” said Seymour.
Meanwhile, Seymour said that schools had “their part to play” in setting a good example for students and urged them not to hold teacher only days during term time. And Seymour also took aim at children intending to participate in a school climate protest today saying it should be held in the holidays, which would somewhat dampen the whole “strike” angle.
New truancy stats released
All of this took place against the backdrop of the latest round of truancy figures which showed a slight increase in the number of students regularly attending class when compared with one year ago – though the numbers remain stubbornly low. In term two this year, 53.2% of students were in class regularly compared with 47.1% over the same period in 2023.
Truancy data is a lot more complex than it sounds, as Rachel Judkins explained earlier in the year for The Spinoff. In order for a child to be deemed as a regular attendee, they must be present 90% or more of the time. If a student missed more than one day per fortnight, or more than one week per term, they would not considered to be attending regularly. “When you look at the regularly attending stats, it covers people in hospital, it covers funerals, it covers everything,” Vaughan Couillault, president of the Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand, told Judkins.
Daily attendance figures are higher (in the mid-70s to 80s), though Seymour said that for schools to reach the target of 80% regular attendance by 2030 the daily attendance number would need to be 94%.
A chilly reception
Some of Seymour’s previous criticism has been directed at parents intentionally taking their children out of school during term time for “cheap flights”, reported the Herald’s Derek Cheng. But the latest figures, reported 1News, show the main reason for non-attendance in term two this year was short-term illness or medical absences. While the threat of punishment could work in the former case, there is concern that a blanket approach won’t get to the core reason some kids don’t make it to class, as detailed by RNZ’s Felix Walton. Principals Federation head Leanne Otene said it shouldn’t be up to schools to dish out punitive measures, while Post Primary Teachers’ Association president Chris Abercrombie said the ministry could already prosecute parents, but it was hardly used.
“It doesn’t happen very often because students who have got chronic absenteeism… There’s lots of other issues going on in that family and fining them isn’t necessarily going to help the situation at all,” he said. One principal, Pat Newman, told Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan it was a political decision that sounded good, but wouldn’t work in practice.
There has also been push back against the call for teacher-only days to be held in the holidays, reported The Post’s Hanna McCallum. “I quite like giving schools the right to make those decisions – what’s best for them,” said one mum. “They don’t do it for fun”. It’s hard to find a single voice in the media endorsing the government’s moves, though Seymour has no apologies. “If the truancy crisis isn’t addressed there will be an 80-year long shadow of people who missed out on education when they were young.”
Te reo course funding redirected
If last week was all about crime, this week is shaping up to be the government’s education week. While David Seymour was rolling out his own policy yesterday, the education minister Erica Stanford also confirmed that $30m of funding for a course to help teachers learn te reo Māori would be redirected into the government’s revamped and fast-tracked maths curriculum, reported the Herald’s Rachel Maher. Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking, Stanford argued that that maths achievement was a higher priority.
But the move blindsided some, New Zealand Education Institution president Mark Potter told RNZ’s Checkpoint. Potter believed the decision was shortsighted. “It gave a different world view through the Māori lens as well as increasing their confidence, their skill levels and by doing so, the same thing for the children they are teaching, it has been enriching for everybody,” he said.