Alarm at primary school truancy

By BRIDGET CARTER

Primary school-aged children are reportedly missing school at a higher rate than high school students in some parts of the country.

Truancy involving children under the age of 10 is climbing in South Auckland, Waikato and Northland, say truancy officers.

But the problem is particularly severe in the Far North where the number of students dealt with by the school attendance service has leaped in a year from 657 to 727.

Kaitaia and Districts Truancy Service co-ordinator Audrey Beazley said of those cases more than half were aged under 13 and Maori.

One is a seven-year-old who has changed schools 21 times.

But she said as more students were dealt with on the street, schools were reporting fewer cases to the appropriate authorities."If the schools used the service we would not have a big increase in truancy," she said.

The statistics come as a Ministry of Education report shows truancy rates are similar to previous years.

Education Minister Trevor Mallard last week announced plans for $8.6 million to be spent on truancy, including a new project in which parents would receive automated emails and text messages when their children were not at school.

School attendance officers said there were problems with that because many of the families they dealt did not have telephones or computers.

But Mr Mallard said it was just one measure, with many others, to keep children safe.

Ms Beazley said the way to tackle the problem was to continue sending letters to parents and to hire more front-line staff.

She was assisting police who were planning to prosecute nine sets of parents.

Those caregivers, mainly solo parents, had children aged under 13 out of class for about half of the school year.

Some involved:

* A young boy kept home to care for his father.

* A girl who does not want to attend school because she has boils and scabies.

* A child whose mother needs a break and whose father is "brainwashing the kids" about education.

* A mother trying to get her life back on track while struggling to get her daughter to attend school.

Cases arrived on Ms Beazley's desk when a child had been away from school without an explanation for three consecutive days.

She sometimes felt uneasy about prosecuting parents, but said she had to once the child had been away 20 days in a row.

Both Shirley Maihi of Manurewa district truancy and Wiki Wickliffe, of Tokoroa district truancy said there were more "condoned absences" for primary pupils.

However high school student numbers were still greater for truancy, unlike in the Far North where this year 325 primary pupils were reportedly dealt with on patrol.

Kaitaia Primary School principal Denis Raines, who was "shocked" by the figures, said some families thought primary school did not matter.

With some families, many transient, it was even a struggle getting an emergency number and a child delivered to school on time.

Attending primary school each day set up good habits for a child and without it a student would find it impossible to achieve further up in the education system, he said.

The Far North needed a better system for truancy and more resources.

Rural schools were trying to deal with the problem in-house - without the means to do it properly.