The Ministry of Education is poised to pursue prosecutions of parents who repeatedly refuse to ensure their children attend school.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government would take a firmer approach to school attendance.
“The Ministry of Education is proactively contacting attendance service providers and schools to ensure parents who repeatedly refuse to send their children to school are referred to the ministry,” Seymour said.
Parents could face fines of up to $300 for a first offence. If parents are prosecuted a second time after further refusal, the fine could be $3000.
“This is for people who are the absolute worst and just refuse to engage,” Seymour said.
Seymour said it would be up to the school to report students to the ministry.
He said the ministry would not prosecute parents of students who were absent due to chronic illness or health conditions associated with a disability, or who were genuinely engaging with a school and the supports offered.
“We’re not going to beat people down if they’ve got real problems.”
He said the fines would be for parents who “won’t” send their kids to school, rather than parents who “can’t”.
“What is important is a school doesn’t have to use this. But if a school says, ‘we’ve got people who just aren’t listening, won’t cooperate, they could attend but they don’t’, they can approach the ministry.
“Last year I directed the ministry to exercise its powers and take a more active role in prosecutions to make them viable," Seymour said. "I encourage school leaders to seek that support when all other measures have failed."
The Associate Education Minister said New Zealand was "facing an attendance crisis" but "green shoots are present".
"We need to keep building on them."
Seymour said attendance improved In every term in 2024 compared with the same term in 2023.
'Red light' triggered after 15 days absent in a term
“Around 10% of students are absent for 15 days or more in a school term," the Associate Minister said.
"Students in that bracket would trigger the 'red light' in the general framework. At this point, prosecution would be considered a valid intervention. This means every day at school is important, and interventions will follow if absences build up.
“Attending school is the first step towards achieving positive educational outcomes. Positive educational outcomes lead to better health, higher incomes, better job stability and greater participation within communities.
"These are opportunities that every student deserves.”
Prosecution won't get students back to school - principals
Two principals told Breakfast that engaging with families was far more effective than prosecuting them. (Source: 1News)
Speaking to Breakfast, Rangiora High School principal Bruce Kearney, who had previously prosecuted parents for poor attendance, said the approach had “absolutely no impact” on returning the students to school.
He said the two prosecutions he was involved with cost around $10,000 each, resulting in fines of around $500.
“Attendance is a symptom, it’s not a cause,” he said.
“And you’ve got to peel back from just dealing with the symptoms – i.e. not going to school – and start looking at why these young people aren’t attending, and it could be for anxiety, it could be because they’re working.
“For us, it could be because they’ve finished all their credits, and they’ve already passed their year."
He said the best way to tackle poor attendance was engagement with families.
Māngere Principals Association president Mike Piper also thought prosecution would not have an impact.
He said he was “not a big believer” in the “heavy-handed tool” and preferred a more positive approach, like engaging with families.
“'Can’t’ and ‘wont’, sometimes they’re very interconnected, very had to separate.”
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