Families need to be found before tackling truancy, says a school attendance officer

An Auckland truancy officer says intervention often comes too late, with many children falling out of the system and their families disappearing.

the Office of Education Review said Wednesday This year, 80,000 children were chronically absent in the second semesteroverall the worst of the four school terms in terms of attendance.

That means one in 10 students has missed more than 30 percent of classes this semester, double the rate from 10 years ago.

said Karyl Puklowski, Auckland City Education Services Manager Checkpoint they had been anticipating the coming crisis “for some time,” but the root causes of the problem were complex.

According to her, the latest data from the Energy Regulatory Office provide some clarity about the scale of the problem, but there are still problems with the system.

Referrals to health services depend on when schools begin attendance, and resolution “takes time,” she said.

“There are a lot of layers. It’s a bit like an onion – you have to peel each layer in this time.

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In fact, care services often had difficulty finding and contacting families.

There were limited resources for their search, and then they had to establish a relationship, she added.

“The only way we can address this issue is to engage with whānau and families and through that link find out what the concerns are… and what is needed to support that young person to return to school and attend school and stabilize attendance. “

Attendance services had access to Ministry of Education data to check whether students had transferred and enrolled in other schools, but this was not always accurate, she added.

“Addresses can often be out of date. We may receive a referral with an address in Auckland, but the person may actually live in Christchurch and the last time they lived in Auckland was a few years ago.”

She added that such information should be shared more widely, although attendance services often cooperate with each other.

In her opinion, schools will need to work more on attendance and student engagement, although attendance inspectors have been operating since the beginning of 2023.

“It will take time, but it was a good strategy to build everything needed in the school to manage attendance.”

Care services should have been called much earlier – already during the first year of study – she said.

“We are often called in too late when patterns become established.

“I don’t call it truancy, I don’t call it unauthorized absence, I call it lack of commitment. They just don’t care about education. And that takes a lot of work… and often there are no options available for a young person if they are of a disengaged age.”

The government is focusing badly on work – teachers

The government’s approach was met with criticism from opposition and Labor leader Chris Hipkins, who said the government was focusing on children who were “moderately absent”.

“These are children who may have been absent 11, 12, 13 days a term, which means they are not meeting the 90 per cent attendance target, but they are not chronically absent.

“These are chronically absent children who are actually a much smaller group… (that) are where we should be focusing our attention.”

But Whangārei Primary School principal Pat Newman, speaking on behalf of the teachers’ union, said successive governments had failed to address the root causes of chronic absenteeism.

The data is very clear, he said.

“The main cause of chronic absenteeism is socio-economic issues. This is what we keep telling successive governments.

“If young parents are trying to make ends meet and they may not have gas to get their kids to school or they don’t have enough sets of clothes… then you’re going to have higher absenteeism.”

Newman argued that barriers to children’s participation in classroom activities would disproportionately affect younger students – elementary school students who were naturally more dependent on their parents.

He said his school is using its own money to directly address the problem.

“We use two delivery vehicles at our own expense.

“We are very, very fortunate that one of the local Caltex stations provides all our petrol, but we pay for a driver and a van – nothing from the Ministry or Mr Seymour – and we bring 25 children every day who would otherwise not attend school.”

Newman said if Minister David Seymour wants kids in school, the answer is simple – put more money into schools like his.

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