School students working long hours to support their struggling families is a “growing crisis” the government has failed to address for years, principals say.
They say they’ve repeatedly raised the issue with the Ministry of Education but “nothing was done”.
“I’ve been saying this for years and I just get so frustrated,” said one Principal who spoke anonymously to 1News.
“You are not listening to what works for our communities. We need to partner up with different agencies and all problem-solve together.”
Multiple high-school and tertiary staff, as well as community groups, reached out after 1News reported this week that some high school students are working up to 50 hours a week to help their families with rent, power and groceries.
Many more school students also came forward to say they have similar experiences to the students who shared their stories.
Education Minister Jan Tinetti responded by acknowledging there has been an increase in school students working long hours.
She said: “It’s absolutely unacceptable. It’s tough for everyone out there at the moment but we are well aware that this is a big issue and this is our next step in the reduction of child poverty.”
But one principal who also spoke anonymously said they and their colleagues felt let-down by the Labour government and felt the issue was “too big to handle” for Tinetti.
“They [Ministry of Education] lack any fierceness and they struggle to think outside the box for solutions.”
Another school staff member said: “Their answer for attendance figures is to fund attendance officers. What’s that going to do? I mean, come on.
"We've asked for help, for solutions to target our communities, but no-one's listening."
'Slowly growing crisis'
Child Poverty Action Group’s Alan Johnson also said the issue of school students working longer hours to support their families has been a “slowly growing crisis”.
“The reality is it’s not an educational question, it’s an income question and should’ve been addressed there by Minister Jan Tinetti," Johnson said.
When asked whether she thought the issue around students working longer hours to supplement family incomes was growing, Tinetti responded that it was “being brought to the fore at the moment”.
“Sometimes we do need to shine a light on these issues for us to know the extent of them so that we can come up with solutions."
Tinetti said policies such as the increase in Working for Families payments, increases to benefits and healthy school lunches are making a difference in vulnerable communities but there is still more work to do.
“All our indicators so far say we are reducing child poverty, they are coming down,” she said. We know that we must now target those really hard to shift places.
“Most of the indicators are coming down and showing a significant difference.”
Johnson disputed that interpretation.
“It would be very difficult to read those statistics as being pretty well,” Johnson said.
“The changes since then, and particularly post-Covid, have been so minimal it would be hard to call them significant.”
Sarah Page, co-founder of the Kindness Collective charity, agreed. “Where? Where are the significant changes?” she said.
“Are they actually out there on the ground talking to these people? What are they measuring everything on? “Because from where we’re sitting and from what we hear every day, and all the different groups we work with, it’s just not true."
Page said the Collective has this year increased its support to help up to ten thousand families in hardship a month.
“We’ve seen a massive spike in referrals and everyone we work with has seen a massive spike in referrals as well. We’re also seeing families who were previously doing OK, now reaching out for help. The need is crazy. It’s not getting better.”
Johnson said the issue of school students working longer hours to help their families meet basic needs could be hiding the nature of poverty.
“So when the government knocks on your door and says ‘how are you doing?’ and you say ‘oh we’re doing OK’, the reality is you’re only doing OK because your 16-year-old is working 20 hours a week to top up your income.
“So in some respects the contributions of these young people, who would otherwise be at school, is masking a problem.”
Uni students hit too
Tertiary staff also said they are seeing similar issues. Auckland University of Technology lecturer Richard Pamatatau said a growing number of their students are impacted.
“It’s definitely become worse since the pandemic,” said Pamatatau, though he first noticed concerns a decade ago.
“Increasingly the hours for the students have become bigger and bigger and bigger. And it’s not just students from Pacific or Māori backgrounds, it’s the middle class-adjacent kind of students who are working longer hours as well.
“We’re seeing 30, sometimes 40 hours a week. And it’s because rents have gone up or their parents may have had a change in circumstance.”
Pamatatu said submission rates for assessments have dropped 10% below normal rates among his students, and attendance rates are concerningly low.
“Normally you would see class attendance rates drop towards the end of the year as assessment deadlines start mounting.
“But now, if you have a class, as I do, of 111 students, I’m seeing maybe 30 or 40 students by the end of semester. And the tutorials are dropping off too.
“I think we are short-changing ourselves as a nation. This is our future taxpayer base. Education is giving people skills to enable them to earn a better living going forward and our students are missing out.”
Child Poverty Action Group said it is “inevitable” that income levels are creating a second generation of working-class poor.
“We underestimate the resilience those struggling students and their families have and we take that for granted. We shouldn’t rely on that as being a response to inadequate policy and assume it’s OK to keep going as we are.
“I acknowledge the government has made some changes but it’s not enough to make a steep difference to child poverty. We believe there needs to be a radical rethink of policy settings.
“What we’ve done in the past is not adequate for what we need to achieve in the future.”
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