School principals on the truth behind truancy

Government fixes for truancy need to look at why kids aren't coming to school, rather than just shaming schools for their numbers.Principals are urging the government to take care in the way truancy data is published, saying if it's just going to be another set of league tables it won't be helpful.Bad parenting - or are there a million other reasons that a child might not make it to school? Ash Maindonald - the principal of Western Heights School, a primary school in West Auckland - says that every principal he speaks to has a litany of war stories they share on the truancy issue. "It's front and centre, it's top of mind for them," he tells RNZ's First Up host Nathan Rarere on The Detail today. Maindonald is sceptical about government moves to address truancy, saying one of the causes of it that is not being addressed is "the huge challenges that our explosion of neurodiverse children are posing in class every day."Rules, regulations, gimmicky red tape aren't going to make a difference for our neurodiverse children."The government needs to take a big look at what they do and what they prioritise and say 'let's forget some of this gimmicky stuff and get some of this real core business stuff sorted' - like a teacher aide in every class, every day, all day'."Then you will find that schools, being the self-managing wonders that they are, they will be able to free up other resources to get out into the community and to get out into the homes and to get those children in, because it's people who have a relationship with those families in our community who are going to be able to have the most success interacting with them." Community involvement is a common theme among the three principals we talked to for today's episode, along with the need for more resources to tackle attendance and truancy problems, rather than 'gimmicks' like traffic lights. The government announced last week an "attendance action plan" to address what it calls a "truancy crisis". The government has a target of having 80 percent of students at school more than 90 per cent of the term by 2030. The most recent statistics (from Term 4 last year) show only 53.6 percent of students reached that target.In the first phase, from Term 2 (on 29 April), there will be a public communications campaign, updated public health guidance on attending school and schools will be made to publish attendance data weekly instead of every term.Further proposals still have to be approved by Cabinet - they include a traffic light system to monitor attendance and daily reporting of attendance data by Term 1 next year…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details