Cooper Reed posts on NZ Intiative
All my friends sometimes skip school. For my school ‘think tank’ project, I decided to explore why they do so, and to propose some ideas for reducing the behaviour.
My friends are not alone. In 2023, only 46% of students nationally regularly attended school. That means that more than half missed at least one day per fortnight without a good reason. Earlier this month, the Education Review Office reported that 10% of New Zealand’s students are chronically absent.
The Ministry of Education’s Attendance Service has grown rapidly in recent years. Yet its progress in reducing truancy has been minimal. Rather than simply increasing the number of Attendance Officers, a smarter approach is needed.
The task of the Attendance Service is to ensure that students attend school. To be more effective, it must work more closely with teachers and principals to make sure that attendance at every school is maintained at a high level.
Students skip school for many reasons, including a lack of motivation and willingness to attend school, and other significant reasons, such as bullying, and family troubles. Furthermore, some caregivers are supporting these decisions by their children, making the situation worse.
To make the Attendance Service more effective, a restructure is necessary. Schools should be able to appoint their own Truancy Officers to take responsibility for attendance. If Truancy Officers were located in particular schools, they could form relationships with truant students and their families to support them better.
To effectively reduce truancy, the different reasons students skip school must be taken into account. Localising Truancy Officers would enable them to tailor their work to support attendance by addressing the specific reasons that particular students are truant.
Such a restructure would not be costly. In fact, if it made each Truancy Officer more effective, it might even save money.
The effectiveness of the approach is likely to vary, with community and school factors influencing its effectiveness. It may take longer to see results in some schools than others.
Localising Truancy Officers would help address New Zealand’s school attendance problem, but it probably won’t entirely solve the truancy problem. Over time, further solutions should be developed to suit the needs of specific communities and families.
Localised responses to truancy are likely to be more effective than a top-down approach from the central government. But, if the attendance service were structured better, we could achieve a reduction in truancy relatively quickly.
The task of the Attendance Service is to ensure that students attend school. To be more effective, it must work more closely with teachers and principals to make sure that attendance at every school is maintained at a high level.
Students skip school for many reasons, including a lack of motivation and willingness to attend school, and other significant reasons, such as bullying, and family troubles. Furthermore, some caregivers are supporting these decisions by their children, making the situation worse.
To make the Attendance Service more effective, a restructure is necessary. Schools should be able to appoint their own Truancy Officers to take responsibility for attendance. If Truancy Officers were located in particular schools, they could form relationships with truant students and their families to support them better.
To effectively reduce truancy, the different reasons students skip school must be taken into account. Localising Truancy Officers would enable them to tailor their work to support attendance by addressing the specific reasons that particular students are truant.
Such a restructure would not be costly. In fact, if it made each Truancy Officer more effective, it might even save money.
The effectiveness of the approach is likely to vary, with community and school factors influencing its effectiveness. It may take longer to see results in some schools than others.
Localising Truancy Officers would help address New Zealand’s school attendance problem, but it probably won’t entirely solve the truancy problem. Over time, further solutions should be developed to suit the needs of specific communities and families.
Localised responses to truancy are likely to be more effective than a top-down approach from the central government. But, if the attendance service were structured better, we could achieve a reduction in truancy relatively quickly.
4 comments:
The biggest reason for the truancy is the cultural change that Jacinda brought in, and now perpetuated by Labour, the Greens and TPM, which is that nobody needs to work. It's easier spending your life on a benefit, handouts and Treaty money than earning an income. That gang membership is a legitimate career choice. When adults have no routine and can't be bothered working, then neither will the kids.
Yes, nip it in the bud.
In my case....
I had a real resentment to school. I think it all started with bullying, probably. Not fitting in was difficult and I did not trust anyone. And I say this with just cause, being smacked in the face wasn't uncommon, I was pretty defenseless, l was probably under 50 kg. But then I found some other people a bit like me and that's when the games began. More fun not at school eh?
And I know bullying is something you have to harden up to but at the same time I guess that's exactly what I did do. I think they call it acting out. Most of the school staff were very myopic.
I wonder now though so if there is a reverse and everyone is trying desperately not to tread on anyone's feelings. I suppose there's always something to navigate.
This seems to be written on the misunderstanding that the truancy service is their for the children. In reality it is just another government fiefdom, growing managers is the game. An increase in truancy is a bonus as it allows yet more manager positions. Which automatically increases the pay grade of those already at the top.
Increased truancy does appear to reflect a reduction in respect for authority and fear of consequences. The emphasis over recent decades on children's 'rights' and on protecting them from anything upsetting or frightening has contributed to the problem. This has been driven largely by feminists who have constantly expanded definitions of violence and abuse as one part of their quest to increase female power through lawfare. Feminist ideology also contributed significantly to 'anti-smacking' legislation that more generally reduced parental authority, particularly demonizing male ways of parenting. 'Power and control' came to be seen as evil. Huge increase in the number of sole mothers raising children is another consequence of feminist ideology and, based on international research, truancy is only one of the many problems more prevalent in 'families' that have expelled the father.
Nowadays, punishing parents for not ensuring their child gets to school is very unfair because that child, especially if a teenager, will simply say "f*** off you stupid ******, you can't make me". Almost any potentially effective response to the child carries the risk of false allegations that will be believed by gullible agencies and may well result in the parents being prosecuted for 'child abuse'.
I'm not suggesting that real child abuse and indeed our appalling rate of physically injuring and killing children should be tolerated at all. Such real child abuse only appears to have increased under the feminist regime, as might be expected when parents feel unable to enforce reasonable behavioural boundaries in reasonable ways.
Of course, schools have long been stripped of most ways through which they might assert authority. All they have left is suspension and expulsion, ironically much more violent than previous responses because they treat and define children as too unacceptable to be included in normal socialization, rather than simply as children who have broken a rule for which they will receive routine punishment then welcomed back the next day with expectations of improvement.
Cooper Reid's suggestions are good ones likely to make a difference, but that difference will be small until the ideological causes of the problem are addressed.
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