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Friday, February 24, 2023

Alwyn Poole: The Truth about NZ Truancy


The NZ Herald notes that Term 3 NZ School attendance data has finally been released. It also notes that Jan Tinetti admitted deliberately sitting on it (and thus avoiding numerous OIA’s – I assume she blames the previous Minister) since December. They have become so transparent that people now see right through them.

From the Ministry of Education’s data branch (who are very good BTW) this graph is telling.


Click to view

The government has been quick during the last five years to blame every woe on international trends. As the NZ Herald notes (from an ERO report).


“In Australia 73 per cent of students attended regularly in 2019 and regular attendance was above 80 per cent in the UK, Ireland, the US and Ontario in Canada where benchmarks for regular attendance ranged from 89-92 per cent and the figures dated from 2015/16 through to 2020/21.”

One graph tells a major long-term story.


Click to view

Labour have worked hard to say that attendance started declining in 2015 and therefore National is to blame. That is – by and large – a myth.


Labour – under former Minister of Education Hipkins – have driven this off a cliff.

Jan Tinetti was unbelievably poor on the AM show Tuesday morning. She did a Sgt Shultz impression for some of it.
  • She admitted she had the attendance Term 3 attendance data by Dec 22. There have been many OIA requests for it – all denied.
  • She says she is not responsible for releasing it but then says it would have been cynical to release near Christmas.
  • She doesn’t see it as cynical to have the data released later that day after releasing a new policy at 5am that morning.
  • We have 120,000 chronically absent, over 10,000 enrolled nowhere, she says average full attendance up to 46% – but their main policy is 84 more truancy officers. Nothing about improving schools or improving teaching standards.
When high decile State school students (low Equity Index Number in the new parlance) are not seeing the point of going to school as they are finding more efficient ways of learning – the system is shot. This is the best illustration of how Labour are going about it.

Alwyn Poole, a well-known figure in the New Zealand education system, he founded and was the head of Mt Hobson Middle School in Auckland for 18 years. This article was first published HERE

5 comments:

hughvane said...

Mr Poole - you say "Nothing about improving schools or improving teaching standards".

What about improvements to the school curricula, by which I mean the abandonment of several changes and ongoing initiatives with which NZ children are being 'taught' (= indoctrinated)?

Anonymous said...

There is an up side to all this. At lest the kids not showing up, aren't being indoctrinated into any manor of leftist woke ideologies.

Anonymous said...

My high achieving grandchild at a middle decile primary school is not fond of school because "You don't learn anything you frequently get bullied in group activities, the teacher can't teach maths concepts accurately nor spell,nothing is marked, bad behaviour of other students is not corrected, no other classmate can read at his level and a good fraction of the class are doing remedial work". He misses quite a bit of school preferring to do workbooks his parents buy to challenge him at home.Even ex teachers from this school,recommend this course of action. He goes to school just to socialize some days.
I also have a friend whose grandchild has school anxiety because of learning difficulties that have not been remediated at school.The parents have found a tutor at great expense but the child dislikes school and develops all sorts of nervous bodily disorders most mornings when it is time to go to school. Other children pick on him as well because of his learning struggles.
These are two middle class children.How much worse for low decile children.I do believe people have no idea just how dreadful our schools are. It is truly heartbreaking.

*** said...

Racist indoctrination of children is child abuse. What proportion of truants are simply sick and tired of the racist indoctrination child abuse? By the look of the new curriculum with its massive racist indoctrination, truancy may increase substantially. Along with a brain drain of sensible parents taking their children overseas. I suspect many capable teachers will refuse to go along with the racist indoctrination child abuse and leave the profession.

Anonymous said...

The children are better not attending what have always been indoctrination camps. Parents were opposed to compulsory education wherever it has been introduced because it is the duty of Parents first and foremost to educate their children.

The public school system is filled with sexual and mental abuse that dramatically exceeds that which the Churches are accused of. You just don't hear about it in the media because it is largely state controlled and you don't bite the hand of those in power.

Children are better out of the hands of abusers that lie to them about their identities, their history, what science actually is and terrify them using propaganda to sell them a false future.