Ruth Shinoda: Education Review Office Deputy CEO on the chronic absence crisis in schools

The Education Review Office says there's a chronic absence crisis.  

This Term 2, one in ten students were chronically absent.  

Chronic absence has doubled in secondary schools since 2015, and almost tripling in primary schools.  

By age 20, chronically absent students can cost the state three times more than a student who went to school.  

ERO Ruth Shinoda told Mike Hosking the education they're missing out on damages their life chances.  

She says less than half get NCEA level two, and by age 25 almost half are receiving a benefit rather than working.  

Shinoda told Hosking the contributing factors are long-standing.  

She says half of schools don't refer to attendance services because they're often not effective as they're overwhelmed, with some having 500 students to one worker.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got a new look at the ongoing miss that
is school abs andeeism by the age of twenty the
EER the Education Review offers claims chronically absent students cost
the state three times as much as those going to school.
That stuff you would expect the cost in crime and
social housing, all that sort of thing. So last term,
eighty thousand students were chronically absent. That's missing three weeks

(00:20):
in a term. At the here of Bro's Education evaluation,
Seder Ruth Jerodersbeck. Well, this Ruth, very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
You depressed about this very We.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Think we've got a chronic absence crisis. It has bought
the number of students of chronic absence in the last
decade and actually nearly trickled in primary school.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
How do you explain them?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
So students we talked to, so there's a range of
fact that half of them said their mental health and issues,
but being bullied at school and not feeling safe at
schools and issues or things going in their family lives,
for example, moving around a lot. But what we do
know is the support we've got in place to respond
to this is just not adequate and isn't adequately resourced.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
See what's interesting about this for me, apart from the
fact is depress is this goes back to twenty fifteen.
So everyone up until now is blaming COVID. Twenty fifteen's
well before COVID. So something was going on then, wasn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, So we know this has been growing since twenty fifteen.
So these factors that are contributing to a long standing
and we've got to have better support in place. Half
the schools don't refer to attendant services because attendant services
are often not effective because they're overwhelmed. Some of them
have got like five hundred student caseloads for a single worker.
It's just not enough.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Okay. So the caret and stick thing that's going on
with the current government about attendance and making schools all
that is that helping. Is there an approach that works
or not?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
We know that knowing where they are step attendance response,
where we're going to be doing more to understand what's
going on, monitoring and act early. That is a key
part of it. But we're also saying we need more effective,
targeted support and we need to do more to retain
students when they do make it back to school, and
schools need to be funded and services need to be
funded to do this. There's some things we can move
off schools, for example, prosecute and got information sharing, so

(02:01):
schools could focus on what they do best, which is
working with the kids and their parents.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Is it solvable to the extents that like crime? In
other words, it's all very well to get to the
kid and help them, but then they go back home
to where the problems started, and as long as you're
doing that bit, that's where you trouble lies.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
It's definitely solvable because we've looked at really effective systems
both here and abroad, and they are end to end.
But you're right, it has to be relentlessly removing those barriers.
Some of those are with parents and families, but some
of them is about the school. Students most often said
it was kind of school factors that stopped them going
to school, and parents also said they want to work
more closely to school. And we know school are doing
their best, they're just not set up to succeed.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
I don't know how to put it at the light
are and you know, in other words, I don't like school.
I don't like the teachers. I'm bullied. All that stuff
we all went through that have we just become a
bit soft and that's suddenly a reason not to go
to school as opposed to it sucks, but that's life.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
What we talked to these students, it was more serious
things with mental health and also barriers like physical health.
Because these are kids are missing three weeks a term,
it's missing a day or two here. They've got really
significant issues, many of them, and we need to work
through that and so that they can get back to school.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Say, is I mean we I mean, I don't want
to sound like a dinosaur, but we were all bullied
at school, weren't we? Every one of us was bullied
at school. We didn't call it mental health. It was
just we got bullied at school. Is that what you're
talking about, though.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
No, we're talking about a range of things. For example,
and if you're struggling with anxiety or issues like that,
and also if your family's moving around a lot, and
I've seen quite a lot of that, And if your
family's moving and you go into three or four different
schools a year, it's really hard to create those habits
of going regularly that help you succeed and unfortunately, as
you saw in the report, if kids aren't going regularly,

(03:46):
these students are much less likely to succeed in life.
Less than half of get NTA A level two and
by the age of twenty five, nearly half for receiving
a benefit rather than being in work. So this education
they're missing out actually really damages their life life chances.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
So none of none of that's surprising. Unfortunately, Having said that,
is what you're saying that, because you've been around a while,
is life for a young person now profoundly different in
their interaction with school than it was thirty years ago,
for example, or something just just obviously different. Therefore we've
got these problems.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
What we're saying is it's a mixture of things. So
definitely students have got new pressures and new anxieties, and
we're seeing that across education and social media and other
things to put pressures. But we're also saying that somehow
in these in and we've lost the sort of importance
of education and across attendance, we're seeing that we're just
not taking going to school seriously enough, so there are
real barriers. But also we've all of us got to

(04:43):
do more to get our kids going to school regularly
because the more you do it, there's the biggest predictor
of attendance is going to school regularly as a habit.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, I agree. Do we are we an outlier? I mean,
as Australia got the same problem we had, what about
Britain all that sort of stuff. Are we doing something wrong?
Or as Rewisdom country got the same.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Issue, So we did look at that and other countries
don't really measure chronic absence in the way that we do,
but we do know an attendance across issue in New
Zealand is one of the poor performers and we need
to do better and this report hopefully sets out how
we can because are really effective things that we can
do that will make a difference if we do it together.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Good stuff, Gruth, appreciate company as always, Ruth Shanoda, who's
the heat of the eero's Education Evaluations Center. For more
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