Skipping school and having an excuse has become easier for students during the pandemic. Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti says soon-to-be announced changes to the attendance service will have to fix ‘habitual’ Covid truancy
The contracts for the country’s school attendance service come up for renewal in September, but Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti is set to announce changes to it next month.
Earlier this year Education Minister Chris Hipkins revealed to Newsroom his intentions to reverse the service, which shifted away from schools and was contracted out to private providers in 2012.
Both Hipkins and Tinetti have told Newsroom the changes made sense at the time, but schools have repeatedly called for out-sourcing to end and for truancy officers to be closer to their school communities, particularly as non-attendance rises across the country.
School attendance has plummeted to record lows not seen in a decade as Omicron and winter flu rips through communities.
Attendance rates for Term 1 saw below 50 percent of children in school, while for Māori and Pasifika fewer than one-third of those populations were attending regularly (more than 90 percent of the time).
Tinetti told Newsroom work had been underway to overhaul the attendance service for some time now but students and families using Covid as a reason not to be in school had added another dimension.
“It’s another aspect we need to be aware of, it becomes habitual,” she said.
“We need to help parents understand what every day means when a young person misses school. It becomes really easy to miss a day here and there and with a parent that becomes, ‘oh it will be all right, they’ll be fine’.
“That becomes habitual and easy, and we need to help support them and understand how much of an impact that has on a young person’s life. Covid has a big part to play in that and that’s part of this world we’re living in now that we have to understand in the new environment and how we overcome that as well,” she said.
“We also need to look at what will keep young people engaged in school. What worked 50 years ago for young people in education, won’t work now.” - Jan Tinetti
Understanding when Covid is a reason to keep children home is something some parents and school communities are still getting their heads around as the pandemic evolves.
Tinetti gave an example of someone she knows who, upon discovering a friend she’d embraced in a hug the previous day had tested positive for Covid, responded by pulling her child out of school.
“I said actually no that’s not the right thing to do but people don’t understand the world they’re in, so those are the sorts of things we have to help parents understand and the importance of keeping kids in school is critical.”
Changes to the attendance service will be announced by Tinetti before the current contracts run out in September, but she warns the changes might be rolled out in stages.
The overwhelming message from school principals is that they want attendance officers closer to their schools – even if that means some of them are still contracted out.
Alongside that is a soon-to-be launched nationwide campaign informing communities of the importance of education in a young person’s life.
“It’s got to be a whole of community approach to knowing and understanding the importance of education. We take that for granted, but not everybody has that understanding and that’s across all demographics too,” Tinetti said.
“We also need to look at what will keep young people engaged in school. What worked 50 years ago for young people in education, won’t work now.”
Tinetti says the national curriculum refresh, which is also underway, will help with keeping students interested.
“Things like free and healthy lunches in schools are incredibly important too because it’s a different world now and we’ve got to understand the barriers for why people aren’t attending in the first place,” she said.
