Just providing more funding to schools will not solve the attendance crisis.
The Education Review Office have published a report correctly calling school attendance in New Zealand a crisis and stating:
“Tens of thousands of “chronically absent” students are missing weeks of school – and the Education Review Office (ERO) says it has reached crisis point.
In the past decade, chronic truancy has doubled in secondary schools and nearly tripled in primary schools.”
The core reason students are not going to school is that many, many families have completely lost faith in the school system as a whole, their local schools, the Ministry of Education and the efficacy of our qualifications system. Don’t forget 10,000 students are enrolled nowhere at all.
We are the nation in the developed world with the most bullying in schools and the greatest difference in achievement between haves and have nots.
Ethinicity statisitics are telling too. In Term 2 of 2024 approx 53% of students fully attended but only 41% of Pasifika and 39% of Maori.
Instead of accepting any level of responsibility for this dire situation the teacher unions come straight out with … give us more money and will will fix things and buy the Auckland Harbour Bridge as well.
Post Primary Teachers’ Association president Chris Abercrombie said “governments need to be brave enough to address underlying causes of chronic non-attendance, including poverty, housing insecurity and mental health”.
This included integrated and funded solutions involving “gateway, alternative education and activity centres, pastoral care and learning support”.
No mention there of teacher quality, school quality, qualifications quality.
NZEI Te Riu Roa President, Mark Potter, says “the weaknesses identified in the current system are down to either lack of resourcing or socioeconomic factors that contribute to absenteeism like trauma and poverty.”
There are two key problems/solutions here:
- Parenting. This is not to dump on parents but as a society we need to recognise that we need mechanisms to massive improve our parenting – starting from having outstnding information and programmes from pregnancy to 5 years of age. This should in no way be funnelled through the Ministry of Education or schools. Good parenting can, and should, occur – regardless of wealth, ethnicity, parent’s education levels.
- The Ministry and schools need to accept their very significant part in creating the problem – and actually set our to reform and inprove. At present they offer no genuine solutions to the attendance crisis.
Alwyn Poole
alwyn.poole@gmail.com
Innovative Education Consultants Ltd
Education 710+ Ltd
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alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/
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