Truants not being checked

By STUART DYE education reporter

Education officials are sitting on thousands of truancy cases while experts in getting children back into school are idle with no work, it is claimed.

Staff at the Non Enrolment Truancy Service say the Ministry of Education is stalling on sending out details of missing students because it has failed to budget for the service.

The ministry has denied there is a backlog of cases and also that there is a funding issue.

But one Auckland school alone has 27 missing children. It has alerted the ministry but has heard nothing.

Chris Tunks, an education adviser with the service, said the ministry was defying its own Education Act.

"Every child under the age of 16 must go to school under the law, but they are allowing possibly thousands to go without education."

Mr Tunks said that in his West Auckland patch alone probably 100 children were not accounted for.

"We are contracted to the ministry to help these kids but they are not giving us the cases. Schools are asking what is going on but we just don't know."

One teacher, who declined to be named, said the lack of money meant only 165 cases could be dealt with at any one time.

"That would just about fix three schools, but nothing near the numbers needed," he said.

After 20 days of non-attendance a school sends truancy reports to the Ministry of Education which in turn forwards the details to the truancy service.

Advisers from the service then find the children and put them back into a suitable education environment.

Jim Matheson, operations policy manager at the ministry, said referrals were being held up because the ministry wanted a better handle on the national truancy situation.

He was not aware of a backlog and there was no danger of children failing to get an education.

"We are doing an initial screen of referrals to get a better picture of who's being referred."