Northland students are being stood-down and suspended from schools at nearly twice the national average.
Last year's Ministry of Education figures also show Maori students are disproportionately represented among suspensions and stand-downs.
Act MP Donna Awatere Huata yesterday highlighted another aspect of the problem when she pointed to the high number of
primary school suspensions from the poorest 50 per cent of schools nationally.
Information released to Ms Awatere Huata by Education Minister Trevor Mallard showed that nationwide in 2000, nearly 700 of 831 primary school suspensions were from the poorest half of schools.
The Educations Ministry figures show 4.4 per cent of all Northland students were stood-down last year, compared to a national figure of 2.4 per cent.
A stand-down is defined as the formal removal of a student from school for a specified period - no more than five school days in any term, or 10 days in a year.
A suspension is the formal removal of a student from school until the board of trustees decides the outcome at a suspension meeting.
In the most serious cases students under 16 can be excluded from the school, meaning they have to enrol elsewhere.
Students over 16 can be expelled.
In Northland the suspension rate in 2000 was about 1.5 per cent, compared to the national figure of 0.7 per cent.
Last year three five-year-olds and six four-year-olds were among those stood-down in Northland.
The age group at which stand-downs peaked was 14, with 318 cases.
Among those suspended was one six-year-old and one eight-year-old.
Again the problem peaked with 14-year-olds, with 135 suspensions.
With Northland dominated by low-decile schools, it is perhaps unsurprising poorer schools dominate the stand down and suspension figures in the region.
The figures show stand-downs peaked at decile-two schools in the region, with 594 cases, at a rate of around 77 per 1000 students.
For decile-three to five schools, the stand-down rate was around 40 per 1000 students.
The ministry said today that nearly 9500 Northland primary students were at decile-one to three schools, with around 7000 at decile-four to seven, and 1400 at decile-eight to 10 schools.
At secondary level there were about 3500 students at low-decile schools, 5300 at medium-decile, and 562 at high-decile.
Maori accounted for 913 stand-downs in the region, compared to 397 for Pakeha.
With suspensions, 332 were for Maori and 126 Pakeha.
Primary school students accounted for 172 of the stand-downs, at a rate of 10 per 1000. The 959 secondary stand-downs were at a rate of 102 per 1000.
- NORTHERN ADVOCATE
