David Seymour: Associate Education Minister unveils latest solution to address truancy

The Associate Education Minister says the key to fixing truancy is banding agencies together. 

In Term 2 this year, one in 10 students was chronically absent - with more than 80,000 missing more than three weeks of the term. 

Since 2015, chronic absence has doubled in secondary schools and almost tripled in primary schools. 

David Seymour says his proposed solution ties in all the key players.

"It has a role for everybody. Parents, critically, but also students and the school and the different Government agencies like the Attendance Service, Oranga Tamariki, police and so on." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heather do the clen the Education Review Office reckons we're
now at a crisis point over chronic school absences in
New Zealand. The ERA report out today says eighty thousand
kids were chronically absent in term two. Now, David Seymour
is the Associate Associate Education Minister responsible for dealing with
true and seeing. He's with us. Now, Hey, David, Hi, Heather,
do you reckon that the changes that you're making is

(00:20):
going to fix this?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
I do the headline figure that's shocked everybody of about
eighty thousand, so one in ten students being chronically absent.
We've known that for a while from the data that
we publish each term. It's crept up over the last
ten years, and I think it's fair to say it's
a crisis. However, the useful parts of the report that

(00:43):
I commissioned from AERO is that it shows why things
aren't working. You've got too many people who aren't talking
to each other, Attendance services of varying quality, police and
MSD at Ricky not really integrated into the system. And
what I'm proposing and building up this year as STAR,

(01:06):
which we call stepped Attendance Response System it has a
role for everybody, parents critically, but also students and the
school and the different government agencies like the attendance services.
I rung it to a ma Rickie police and so on,
because where I've seen success and this is why I
believe it will work. There's places like glen in this

(01:28):
school in East Auckland, Freiburg High in Palmerston North, places
like Burnside and christ Church where I visited and I
found that they're getting success because they have a group
of people, partly in the school, partly in the community,
who all work together. They're not shy about breaking privacy
laws if they really have to, and we're going to
have information sharing agreements amongst the departments as part of

(01:51):
this too. And they actually do everything possible to stop
kids for coming tru it, get them back if they are,
and keep them thereto great them so that they stay.
What the euro report shows is that while that's possible,
it only happens in a few places. The norm is
miscoordination and that's what the Star system is designed to fix. David.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
If Chris Luxen considers this ban on the Nazi salute
by the mongrel mob and then takes it all the
way through to cabinet, and it gets to the cabinet stage,
would you support it?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Well, I'm pretty skeptical about any restriction on speech. The
problem with standing for free speech is you always end
up defending people that you wouldn't want to have over
for dinner yourself. So you know, I absolutely bore any
kind of Nazi symbolism. But there's another argument that if
people do have really stupid views like that and are

(02:44):
willing to self identify by making these symbols, then maybe
we should let them ay doing us all a favor.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Because we know that that's stupid. David, Thank you very much.
David Seymour Eggs part of Leader and of course Associate
Minister of Education. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive,
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