Lasting and integrated solutions needed to improve school attendance – PPTA
Schools desperately need more, and targeted, support to address worsening chronic school non-attendance rates, says Chris Abercrombie, PPTA Te Wehengarua president.
Commenting on the release of an Education Review Office report into the issues, he agreed with the agency that the current model for managing school attendance was not designed to succeed.
“The issues causing the increase in chronic non-attendance over the last 10 years are complex and varied. If we want to see a long-term reduction in these rates, schools and school attendance services need more staffing, more time and more resources.
“Schools and attendance services are stretched to the limit. They don’t have the time and resources that these issues need. Young people who are chronic non-attenders, and their whānau, need a lot of ongoing time, attention and support that currently just is not there.”
Chris Abercrombie said the report made it clear there was no quick fix, evidenced by the fact that the attendance of many students who return to school after chronic non-attendance, starts to slip again after about two months. “When these students return to school, it is a challenge to reintegrate them – schools need more support for this.
“We need lasting, meaningful and integrated solutions – both at the community level, with other agencies and supports, and at the school level with appropriate funding and resourcing for gateway, alternative education and activity centres, pastoral care and learning support.
“Alternative education has been chronically under-resourced for years, a point which has been made previously by ERO.
“It’s deeply disappointing that the Govenrment has chosen to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a vanity project such as charter schools, when issues such as chronic non-attendance are crying out for adequate funding.”
PPTA also had serious concerns about the report’s recommendations for more parental prosecutions. “All this will do is put people who are struggling financially further into debt, and / or give them a criminal record.”.
Governments needed to be bold and brave enough to address the underlying causes of chronic non-attendance. These included poverty, housing insecurity, and mental health.