David Seymour: Associate Education Minister on the changes to truancy service contracts to further improve attendance

David Seymour says the Government's winning because attendance is improving.  

The Associate Education Minister's putting $140 million towards improving attendance over four years, promising to reach twice the number of students. 

Extra support is going to 170 schools with chronic absence. 

Seymour told Mike Hosking when defining our long-term future, the thing that matters most is getting kids into class.  

He says throwing money at the problem helps, and this is a better use of taxpayer money to make sure children stay in schools. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So a new contract system being rolled out to deal
with our chronic school absentees and problem. Old deals have
been scrapped. We got forty new contracts for eighty three
rather new contracts. A bunch of schools will get extra support.
There's money for basics like uniforms and transport. David Seymour
as the Associate Minister of Education and is in charge
of all that this needs. Back with this morning, Good
morning mate. Overall, are you winning or not?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
We are because attendance is improving and it's probably I
would say that the number one thing that matters today
is how many children actually go to school in terms
of defining our long term future. That's why we're fixing it.
In the case of these attendance contracts, I went around
the country, talked to principles, deans, attendance offices and schools
and said, well, you know, what do you getting from

(00:43):
your attendant service contracts. The answer was highly variable. Ero
at the same time did a more scientific investigation and
found that it's actually terrible in many places. So we
have dumped the contracts that we had with recontracted eighty
three new regions. We've also improved the access to data,

(01:06):
so new software, so they spend less time looking for
children and more time actually getting them back to school
and staying there. This is on top of adding about
twenty million a year in extra funding for attendant services
because you can't just throw money at it, but it
does help when you have such a big problem. So altogether,
from the start of next year we will have a

(01:27):
much better use of tax payer money getting children back
to school through attendant services and making sure they stay there.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Good too pronged a question out of the were the
old agreements you being ripped off or were they just useless?
And are the new people better and do you know
they're better? And are the people out there to provide
better services or finding people to do the job hard work?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, first of all, it's just a system that didn't
get a lot of attention for a long time. I
suspect so there's some really great people out there. I've
met a lot of them. There were some that frankly
were just useless, and the Aero report was pretty damning
in that sense. We're going to get better. Well, what
we've done is started from zero. Nothing's guaranteed, said, these

(02:06):
are the criteria, here's your new contracts. Here's how we're
going to measure the performance. Here's your money. We'll be watching.
So I hope that that is going to lead to
much more consistent and higher performance across the country. So
when principals look for the attendant service to give them
a hand getting children back to school and staying there,
the call will be answered a lot more frequently and

(02:26):
consistently than it has been.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
And so how much of it's the attendant service and
their efficiency and effectiveness versus the parent who's a dropkick.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Well, look, I mean there's no question that it's very
hard to get this done. By getting this done, I
mean get students back to school at the government's target
rate if the parents don't want to play ball. But
what I do know is that good attendant services can
get into the home, they can find the barriers, and
that's why we've also put aside a small amount of

(02:58):
money that they can use for things like transporting uniforms.
And sometimes the reason a child won't attend are things
you wouldn't expect, you wouldn't think was a big deal,
but it is for them. So look, parents' attitudes definitely
play a role, But I work on the basis that
most people, most of the time are actually trying to
make the world work, and we've got to work with them.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Let's hope it works some more. I appreciate your time
to OVID see more Associate Minister of Education.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
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