Editorial -Tuesday June 25, 2013

Missing the school bus

PRIME MINISTER John Key became the umpteenth politician to pontificate on Northland's glorious potential when he spoke in Kerikeri last week. He noted that the region had enjoyed a 3 per cent lift in its economy over the last year, better than the national figure by some margin, while it had a "massive" future that was still to be unlocked, specifically courtesy of horticulture, agriculture, tourism and minerals. He might have added forestry and fishing.

The trouble is, Northland has been eyeing that potential for generations, with very little benefit actually accruing so far. That despite the fact that some Northlanders are doing very well. The region might, as Mr Key put it, be home to poverty beyond belief, but that poverty is not evenly shared around.

Nor are the keys to ending that poverty necessarily simple. There are exceptions - milk processing at Kauri is one, Juken NZ in Kaitaia another - but on the whole we continue to export our most valuable products in their raw state, and that does very little to boost our collective wealth. The shameful exporting of huge quantities of swamp kauri in the state in which it emerges from the ground is the most recent example of that.

Our failure to process what we produce is the fundamental problem when it comes to reducing unemployment and poverty in Northland. But there is also the lack of enthusiasm with which some of us embrace the chance to educate our children. Even if a vast well of job opportunities opened up many would be in no position to take advantage of them. Geography has much to do with that - no one would want to see a Northland version of what Auckland is to New Zealand in terms of population concentration, and many people in this region live in places where work will always be hard to find. It is also true, however, that kids who acquire very little basic education are behind the 8 ball even before they need to start thinking about working.

The scale of the problem was revealed last week when police in Whangarei conducted a blitz on school truancy. Nationally ten per cent of students can be expected to be AWOL on any given day, and what the police found in Whangarei supported that.

The police expressed some confidence that real progress would now be made, but that remains to be seen. The problem of mass truancy has, after all, been well recognised for some time. The Ministry of Education's response, in the Far North at least, has long been little more than a token gesture. If it transpires that the likes of Ngapuhi Social Services can really make a difference, not only in getting kids into classrooms but addressing some of the issues behind their truancy, they will deserve our applause and gratitude, but the likelihood is that when the fuss dies down we will return to what passes for normal.

The police reportedly accept that about half of absences on any given day are justifiable, but a large chunk are not. The explanations offered during the blitz included two brothers who claimed they couldn't go to school because their uniforms were wet, although they offered different explanations for how that came to be, while a supposedly ailing boy was found on next door's PlayStation. One girl claimed that she did go to school - she had been there four days this term alone.

Just what these kids' parents are thinking is anyone's guess. They probably don't think at all. There may be some cause for sympathy in that a recalcitrant teenager can be a difficult beast, but kids who refuse to do as they are told on this level are made, not born. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the average truant is largely the result of poor parenting.

Whatever their reason for staying away, kids who miss school on a regular basis are inevitably going to face major challenges in adulthood. They might not be aware of that but their parents, particularly parents who have themselves suffered from a lack of education, should be. And while there might be little to be gained from hog-tying kids for delivery to school, the education system should make it clear that parents who fail to meet their legal obligation regarding attendance are committing a serious offence against society. The last time the writer heard, the penalty for failing to ensure attendance at school was a fine of $25 per day, a sad indictment on how we value education in this country.

It's not just Northland that's displaying such shameful disregard for an opportunity that is fundamental to successful adulthood. Northland and Gisborne might reportedly have the highest truancy rates in the country at 13.1 per cent, but the national figure is 10.2 per cent, almost half of which is deemed as unjustifiable. In 2011 some 74,000 kids were absent for part or all of a day during a week-long survey, 29,000 of them having no genuine excuse. Do we still talk about developing a knowledge economy or have we given up on that?

At the other end of the scale are the snobs, like the young professional couple who according to a Sunday paper last week moved from Wellington to Auckland, and, with their oldest child two and a half years old, began looking at her schooling options. Horror of horrors, their nearest school was - wait for it - Decile 3!

To their credit the parents have now decided that they should look at more than the decile rating before rejecting a school, and the digit '3' no longer casts them into fits of despair. In time they will no doubt come to learn that decile ratings have very little to do with how well children learn, but in the event that they don't, help may be at hand courtesy of this year's census.

It is average household income, occupations, household crowding, educational qualifications and welfare benefits within a school's catchment that decide a school's decile rating, and these are expected to have changed since the last census in 2006. When the new data have been processed it is likely that schools will be given new ratings to reflect those changes. The good news is that the experts reckon schools in places like the Far North will be given lower ratings, which will mean more government funding.

The good news for the Auckland couple is that the school nearest to them is likely to go up point or two. That will no doubt do wonders for their self-esteem, although it might also mean that they will have to dig deeper into their pockets to make up the shortfall, or give up some of their time to fundraise. A small price to pay for the comfort of a high decile rating.

It's good to know that some parents take their children's education seriously - one suspects that this Auckland family won't add to the truancy statistics - but disconcerting that some people's understanding of how schools function, ideally in partnership with parents, remains so shallow that decile ratings are to become state secrets.

The decile rating is probably the least significant factor in how well a child is educated. In fact if every Northland school was Decile 1 our kids would be better off in terms of funding. If they bother turning up. If they don't the best teachers in the world can do nothing for them.