School absenteeism rise 'a perfect storm' - truancy officer

November 3, 2022

Waipareira Trust truancy officer Kimi Rewi said Covid-19 amplified an existing issue.

New Zealand's school absenteeism rates are significantly up, and one truancy officer says it's the result of "a perfect storm".

In the first term of this year, just 46.1% of students regularly attended school, with nearly 7000 classed as persistently truant. Māori are over-represented in the Ministry of Education figures, with 67.2% not regularly attending.

Waipareira Trust truancy officer Kimi Rewi told Breakfast this morning that "things on the ground are hard".

"Absolutely a perfect storm of a bunch of things coming together.

"Truancy is something that we know has always been around, and Covid and lockdowns have amplified and added things to what was already an issue," she said.

When asked for examples of contributing factors, Rewi said "mental health...with every household we walk into is an issue".

"You have bullying, you have peer pressure, you have generational trauma - and that is regardless of what your income looks like."

Rewi said other factors include disengagement from the curriculum, health issues and being unable to afford a uniform, for example.

"It is not hard to engage with them...the majority of the parents that I work with want their children in school, they want help," Rewi said.

"You've got to go in there and work with family, with issues that they're dealing with - whether it be financial, whether it be health-wise, whether it be trauma - before you can actually get to work with the attendance issue at hand, the truancy.

"We need more people on the ground at grassroots...you need dedicated services, also for families. At the moment there are services out there that are stretched, and waiting lists that are so long."

'Most alarming set of stats I've encountered' - Luxon

National's leader said the figures were "the most alarming set of stats [he's] encountered".

National Party leader Christopher Luxon said truancy is a "major issue".

"It's been the most alarming set of stats I've encountered since I came to politics," he told Breakfast this morning. "We need to make sure it's a government responsibility, it's certainly a school responsibility, it's certainly a parental responsibility."

Luxon agreed with Rewi in calling for more investment in community organisations to tackle the problem, saying they "know the children, know the families, can stick with them, make sure that they build a new habit about attending school".

"We don't think we should continue to fund failure...we should take some of that money and deploy it and push it out to the community organisations so they can scale up and actually get the people that they need to be able to do that hard work on the ground.

"We have to be committed to it, it's the number one thing that changes the future prosperity of all New Zealanders is how well we can educate our children."

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