A significant funding boost for attendance services across the country.
The Government's investing $140 million into improving school attendance over the next four years, in Budget 2025.
It includes $123 million on a new attendance service, with more data monitoring than currently exists.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour told Mike Hosking a lot of the funding will go towards more people in these roles.
He says about 80 regions will have a single attendance service that schools can call on.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The budget announcements coming through and faster we wind up
(00:02):
to next week, of course, one hundred and forty million
now for the front line Attendant services, that's what they're
calling it, frontline Attendant Services to get school attendants up.
The new services will be more data driven with a
focus on accountability and monitoring. David Cemore's the Associate Minister
of Education, of course, and is with us. Very good
morning to.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You, good morning, way ahead of this.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
What are the numbers so far? Are you winning the
battle on getting kids back to school or not?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, there's been good improvements. If you look at term
on term over the last year, we're doing about five
percent better each term than we were the same term
a year earlier, So where we were getting numbers of
maybe fifty something percent of students attending regularly that means
ninety percent or more, we're now getting more something more
(00:50):
like low sixties pending on the term. So that trend
is positive, but it's also nowhere they're good enough. Our
goal was eighty percent and in my view, you know,
the thing that will tell you the most about where
New Zealand's going to be at ten or twenty fifty
(01:11):
years time from now is how many kids went to
school yesterday.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
That is correct. The accountability aspect of it is everyone
who can playing ball, schools, etc.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Look, I think the truth is our attendant services have
been really really mixed, So there's some heroes out there,
but ero also found some really really pathetic practices when
we got them to review it at the end of
last year. That's why we're going big on attendance. Financially,
we're putting one hundred and forty million dollars of extra
(01:46):
taxpayer money over the next four years. That's thirty five
million a year. I'm not generally keen on spending more money.
I think this is an area where it's worth it.
If we have the accountability, what do you buy with it?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Though you can buying people.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
We're going to largely largely services. So there's going to
be about eighty regions and each one is going to
have a single attendance service that schools can call on.
But that's going to be backed up by much better data.
Because when I sat down with the Ministry when I
got this job at the start of last year, I said, well,
what are you doing? And they produced a big spreadsheet
(02:21):
and I said, well, which of these are the most
effective things we're doing to get kids to school, and
they said, oh, we don't know. So I then went
out and did a series of meetings where I just
listened to principles, attendance offices, youth ade police and said, well,
what actually works and what we're putting in place is
something called star stepped Attendance Response Scheme. That means that
(02:44):
for any level of attendance, if a kid's attending ninety
percent plus, that's great, nothing to see here. But as
their attendance declines, the parents, the school, the Ministry of Education,
are their agencies in the community, ordering atamurki, the police,
they all have a role to play depending on which
step we're at and how we're responding. So we are
(03:06):
putting in more money, but we're also measuring it a
lot better with a much better data. I can now
tell you that yesterday eighty five point nine percent of
students were at school compared with eighty nine last Tuesday.
So it's kind of bad for this week, and we're
going to make sure that we actually get results out
of this money, because you know, it's hard to learn
when you're at school, impossible if you're not.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Well so David Seymour who also today. By the way,
I'm sure it won't be attending, but the White Tangi
Tribunal is having another one of their emergency hearings, this
time over the regulatory Standards build. There's a lack of
a specific tetirity treaty clause in the proposal and the
combined legislative pincer movement that is the RSB and the
(03:50):
TPB as and the treaty being needs to be dealt
with byd Tribunal.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks that'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
The budget announcements coming through and faster we wind up
(00:02):
to next week, of course, one hundred and forty million
now for the front line Attendant services, that's what they're
calling it, frontline Attendant Services to get school attendants up.
The new services will be more data driven with a
focus on accountability and monitoring. David Cemore's the Associate Minister
of Education, of course, and is with us. Very good
morning to.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You, good morning, way ahead of this.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
What are the numbers so far? Are you winning the
battle on getting kids back to school or not?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, there's been good improvements. If you look at term
on term over the last year, we're doing about five
percent better each term than we were the same term
a year earlier, So where we were getting numbers of
maybe fifty something percent of students attending regularly that means
ninety percent or more, we're now getting more something more
(00:50):
like low sixties pending on the term. So that trend
is positive, but it's also nowhere they're good enough. Our
goal was eighty percent and in my view, you know,
the thing that will tell you the most about where
New Zealand's going to be at ten or twenty fifty
(01:11):
years time from now is how many kids went to
school yesterday.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
That is correct. The accountability aspect of it is everyone
who can playing ball, schools, etc.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Look, I think the truth is our attendant services have
been really really mixed, So there's some heroes out there,
but ero also found some really really pathetic practices when
we got them to review it at the end of
last year. That's why we're going big on attendance. Financially,
we're putting one hundred and forty million dollars of extra
(01:46):
taxpayer money over the next four years. That's thirty five
million a year. I'm not generally keen on spending more money.
I think this is an area where it's worth it.
If we have the accountability, what do you buy with it?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Though you can buying people.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
We're going to largely largely services. So there's going to
be about eighty regions and each one is going to
have a single attendance service that schools can call on.
But that's going to be backed up by much better data.
Because when I sat down with the Ministry when I
got this job at the start of last year, I said, well,
what are you doing? And they produced a big spreadsheet
(02:21):
and I said, well, which of these are the most
effective things we're doing to get kids to school, and
they said, oh, we don't know. So I then went
out and did a series of meetings where I just
listened to principles, attendance offices, youth ade police and said, well,
what actually works and what we're putting in place is
something called star stepped Attendance Response Scheme. That means that
(02:44):
for any level of attendance, if a kid's attending ninety
percent plus, that's great, nothing to see here. But as
their attendance declines, the parents, the school, the Ministry of Education,
are their agencies in the community, ordering atamurki, the police,
they all have a role to play depending on which
step we're at and how we're responding. So we are
(03:06):
putting in more money, but we're also measuring it a
lot better with a much better data. I can now
tell you that yesterday eighty five point nine percent of
students were at school compared with eighty nine last Tuesday.
So it's kind of bad for this week, and we're
going to make sure that we actually get results out
of this money, because you know, it's hard to learn
when you're at school, impossible if you're not.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Well so David Seymour who also today. By the way,
I'm sure it won't be attending, but the White Tangi
Tribunal is having another one of their emergency hearings, this
time over the regulatory Standards build. There's a lack of
a specific tetirity treaty clause in the proposal and the
combined legislative pincer movement that is the RSB and the
(03:50):
TPB as and the treaty being needs to be dealt
with byd Tribunal.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks that'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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