Kerre Woodham: Will fining parents of absent kids help?

You might have heard ACT leader David Seymour on the Breakfast show this morning. He says there will almost certainly be prosecutions against parents of absent students this year as the Government intensifies its crackdown on school truancy. And it's not even truancy, in my mind truancy are kids doing a bunk, wagging, taking a day off. What this is, is parental neglect. Parents who are failing to ensure that their kids get to school and get to school on time. According to Ministry of Education figures, around 11.3% of students were chronically absent from school and term 4 last year, equating to around 93,000 young people. Chronically absent means a student attends 70% of school or less. The Associate Minister for Education spelled out what's going to happen next to parents who will not send their kids to school.  

“Basically, a school will go to the Ministry of Education, say look, we've got someone who they're not a can’t, they’re a won't. We've tried. We've gone out. We've engaged with them. They're basically giving us the middle finger and saying education is not important and you've got no right to demand that my kid enrols and attends a school. And in that case I've been told by the youth aid, police, by the attendance officers, by the deputy principal, we need another sanction, another step we can take. At that point they will go to the Ministry of Education and say, look, this is a potential prosecution case. Ministry of Education will weigh it up and if it stacks up, they'll take the prosecution, ultimately go before the courts. Now you can be fined $30 bucks a day up to $300 initially. For repeat offending the fine on parents can be $3000.” 

Which of course many parents won't be able to pay in that category. They're not going to be able to pay it, but the message is clear from the Government. They are quite happy to be the bad guy in getting your kids to school. And principals have said they've already noticed a difference. The expectation is that young people will attend school. Schools have to deliver statistics on the numbers of children who are turning up and they have to deliver those to the Ministry of Education – if their figures are slipping, or if there's no improvement, then action is taken by branches and agencies of the ministry to encourage children to attend school.  

So is it going to help the parents who've rung in and told me they cannot get their children to school? These are the older students who cannot and will not get out of bed. That makes it a bit tricky. We have had, on the face of it, perfectly “normal parents”  who are trying to do the right thing by their children and by the community who want their kids to get ahead in life, who want their kids to go to school, tell us that they cannot get their teenagers out of bed and into the classroom.  

If you can say, well, if I have to pay that fine, then that's going to come out of the money for your wardrobe or the money for your school trip, or the money for your phone plan, will that help? I mean, 11% of kids who are chronically absent, that's quite a lot of children, 93,000 young people, as a lot of young Kiwis who are missing out. And they're not just missing out on learning they're missing out on the structure and the discipline of getting up and going to work.   

And what if the parents and grandparents like me, who take the kids out of school for a jolly? I guess there are exceptions to every rule, but should we be fined as well? If you're willingly, wilfully disobeying the edict from the government to get your kids to school should parents and grandparents like me be fined for basically sticking the middle finger, as David Seymour said, to the attendance expectations? 

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