Kerre Woodham: No wonder parents have trouble convincing children that education is vital

No wonder parents have trouble getting their kids to school. I've had parents who have phoned me, particularly in the last few months, saying they have real trouble getting their teenagers to school when the teenagers simply don't feel like going. And you can understand why. Schooling has been so disrupted over the years. The parents try to tell their kids that school's important, and the kids point to Covid being a time when they were told to stay at home and that they could learn just as well at home. Remember all the promises? Schooling wouldn't be disrupted, that there were plenty of programs that enabled students to learn as well at home as they did in the classroom, in fact, some children would learn better at home than in the classroom.  

Now for the second Monday running, in Auckland kids have been told to stay at home again. Even when schools weren't affected by the flooding. Even when. With Cyclone Gabrielle nothing has happened really yet. As a precaution, kids are being told it's more important that they stay at home than they go to school. Some schools have opted to remain open, but they have been told that it would be a good idea for children to stay at home. I get why emergency services want this to happen.  But what message does this send to our children? Yet again, their education must be sacrificed for the greater good, be it Covid, be it floods, be it cyclones, there are greater priorities than education. And we've seen the result of that. 

School attendance has been steadily declining since 2015 and was made worse by Covid. The fall has been across every decile, every year level, every ethnicity and every region. The biggest drop is among our primary and intermediate kids, and that is the very time that they should be building the foundations of their education. 

Now many factors have been blamed for this: poverty, family violence, uninspiring curriculum, bullying at school. But the blame can also be laid at the feet of the authorities as well, from the Government through to regional authorities. If children are constantly being told that there are far more important things in the world than going to school, than getting an education, no wonder so many parents are having real trouble convincing their children that education is vital. 

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