An education leader is dismissing new Government advice targeting sick kids skipping school as part of its plan to tackle truancy as “very weird”.
Yesterday, the Government published new guidelines for when families should keep sick children home from school.
The rules state children could go to class if they had symptoms including a mild cough, headache or runny nose but appeared well and had not had a fever in the past 24 hours.
Early childhood and primary union NZEI president Mark Potter spoke with Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking about the Government’s approach to tackling truancy.
“Kids need to turn up to school and they need to turn up in numbers that they aren’t at the moment,” Potter admitted.
Hosking asked Potter what he thought of the recently issued guidelines from the Government.
“It does seem very weird that this Government is very critical ... and is drilling down to tell parents and schools on how to tell if children are well enough to go to school.
“It’s not as definitive as I think they think it is, and it’s a dilemma that parents and schools have faced forever and a day.”
“I think we’re going to have to start being a bit clearer about what exactly is a valid reason to stay home,” he said.
Potter said that illness was widespread in the community following the pandemic, and it isn’t just physical illness issues that kids and parents are facing.
“What we do know is that in recent years, parents have had less pressure from employers to force their children to go to school very unwell.
“We don’t want to see that being rolled back.”
Potter agreed that current attendance rates aren’t ideal, but it doesn’t mean unwell children should be sent to school, or that kids and parents are lying about illness.
“We do know that after a pandemic like we’ve had there is always an inevitable wavetail of other illnesses and things that come to the fore.
“The numbers are improving now, but the reasons for children not attending are complex and multiple.”
Hosking asked Potter how much of our truancy issues are about illness, as opposed to other reasons like kids who don’t want to go to school.
“Any child who is not attending school, that really needs to be is a concern.”
Potter said he thought the number of parents or children who don’t care about school was fewer than the public may think.
“What we do know is there’s a growing wave of mental health issues that are at play, and, and they’re often very difficult to work out how you can actually improve and change the reasons of that child or parent.
“Quite often it is the parent who’s struggling.
“You’ll find in a lot of schools, you even have principals and teachers picking children up to help and support those parents in those situations.”
Auckland Primary Principals Association vice president Kyle Brewerton. Photo / File
Auckland Primary Principals Association vice president Kyle Brewerton said he didn’t think the guidance would change attendance materially.
“It’s a curious state of affairs when we’re telling parents how and when they could be sending their kids to school based on how ill they are.”
Hosking asked Brewerton if he thought anyone was going to follow this advice.
“I think to be fair, what it’s really doing is contributing to that bigger message that you need to get back to school.
“We’ve got this big issue around our attendance and this is just another way of sort of saying, you know, let’s get rid of any more issues and get them back to school.”
Brewerton told Hosking he thought it would be “fair” to say the Government is telling people to “harden-up” and get attendance back to pre-covid levels.
“We’ve had four years of being sort of erring on the side of caution if you like.
“It’s really just about sort of redressing the balance.”
