Education advocate Ann Milne believes Associate Education Minister David Seymour’s plan to achieve 80% of students to be present for more than 90% of the term by 2030 is possible but doesn’t think his attendance action plan will do the job.
In fact, she believes this action plan is “targeting Māori”.
Seymour’s plan is expected to take place at the beginning of term two of 2024, just after the school holidays.
Whakaata Māori news and current affairs director Blake Ihimaera talked to Milne about the plan and its wider implications. The plan itself is explained below.
Is increasing attendance to 80% regularly attending by 2030 achievable?
Firstly, of course, we want children to be in school, and the attendance data is a real concern. I think [the] 80% goal is achievable but the government’s attendance action plan isn’t going to achieve it.
Because, yet again, this government, and particularly David Seymour, show their privilege and the fact they are completely out of touch with the realities for whānau – and their old school ideas about fining parents, and blaming the most vulnerable, once again targeting Māori, is typical of their punitive monocultural approach.
What do they think school principals all over the country are doing now? Every principal I know is already working hard on attendance.
In Te Tai Tokerau, as just one example, principals have spearheaded a highly successful programme that has seen attendance rise to nearly 85% last year. Hora Hora principal Pat Newman’s suggestion was that politicians should butt out of the debate and leave schools to get on with what’s working. That’s excellent advice.
That programme provided lunches and breakfasts and engaged the children themselves to promote school as a cool place to be and a place they want to go to. That’s far more innovative than David Seymour’s traffic light system of punishments and police referrals.
Some tamariki don’t attend kura because they work to help pay the bills, is this still the case? What are your observations?
That’s definitely still the case. The issue is poverty – that’s not new. Costs for food, uniforms and transport, have all risen significantly, making it difficult for whānau to get children to school and keep them there. Schools will tell you that most absences are justified, and most often due to illness. What are whānau supposed to do when you have to wait two weeks for a doctor’s appointment If you could afford to go, and if you have the money to pay for prescriptions. Whānau often have no other choice but to keep their child home until they get better.
What’s the government’s role in this reality? Where are school nurses and social workers for primary schools, or subsidised transport options?
That’s why free school lunches are so important and I know schools where the provision of healthy free kai has had a significant impact on attendance but oh yes, that’s right, David Seymour wants to cut or at least reduce that programme. Keeping that going would be way more helpful than mandating attendance data collection.
Are you confident that the social and well-being impacts are taken into consideration when developing these policies?
I have zero confidence that David Seymour and the wider coalition government have any idea of the social and well-being impacts of racism, colonisation, and the inequities Māori whānau face on a daily basis. They have shown this by the raft of policies they have introduced to further marginalise Māori and deny Māori their right under Te Tiriti to make decisions for themselves.
So it’s a given, I think, that social, cultural, well-being and identity are far outside their consideration when they come up with these old-school solutions.
This isn’t a new issue and transcends successive governments. What are they missing when tackling truancy?
Where do I start? I am on record as saying the Covid lockdowns actually gave schools the opportunity to rethink what we think of as ‘normal’ in schools. A few did, most didn’t, and we couldn’t wait to get back to that usual way of working – completely missing the fact that it hasn’t worked for tamariki Māori for generations and schools, and successive governments have tolerated those outcomes as collateral damage – not the colonial education system’s fault, so it must be the kids and their whānau – the same issue we are seeing now with attendance.
It comes back to the relevance of school. That’s why kura kaupapa and other kura where te reo and tikanga Māori are central to everything children do, have better outcomes. Is the government planning more of these options? No.
Is the Ministry of Education prioritising culturally capable professional learning for teachers? It was but I have just received an email from the ministry to say that funding applications from schools that don’t align with the coalition government’s plans for an hour each day of reading, writing, and maths won’t be granted.
Covid-19 did teach us that school is not the only place we learn. Families understand that better than they used to. Some make deliberate choices to educate their children differently.
Take Seymour’s example of taking children out of school for a week for a holiday in Fiji to avoid the higher costs of fares and accommodation in the school holidays. While again that’s a privileged position, travel is a learning experience, [and] so is spending time at the marae or with grandparents. Children should be doing more of all of those.
When I checked Air NZ prices today an adult fare to Fiji in the July school holidays was $1,086. The week before the holidays, it is $279. Doesn’t the government own 51% of Air New Zealand’s shares? Are you doing anything about those costs, Mr Seymour?
Explainer: What is in the attendance action plan?
As part of the attendance action plan, the government is implementing four new changes to help combat low attendance.
In term two of 2024, schools will be required to start publishing attendance data weekly from the second week and the government will be pushing a campaign to show students the importance of attending school.
The public health guidance will be updated to give schools and parents help when deciding if a student is well enough to attend school.
The government will clarify the standards for attendance to school boards.
David Seymour still wants to bring more proposals to the cabinet on attendance, but he said this would be done at a later date.
On the associate education minister’s wish list is schools doing daily reporting of attendance data instead of weekly, while also developing a ‘traffic light system’ to set out the requirements and expectations for parents, schools and the ministry.
He also wants school boards to make attendance a “strategic priority,” so they have clear expectations to focus on minimising disruption to students’ learning, by using improved data and analysis to target the main factors for low and non-attenders.