John MacDonald: What I would do if I was running the new truancy service - Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

Well done to the Government for making all the right noises about dealing with truancy.  

It’s going to spend $140 million over the next four years with one aim: getting more kids to turn up at school regularly.  

It’s looking good. But I’m wanting to see some more creative approaches than what’s been talked about up until now, and I've got some ideas.  

Most of the $140 million ($123 million) is going to go into setting-up what the Government is calling an “attendance service”. So sounds a bit like the old truancy service.  

But what I’m hoping is that it's going to be prepared for this new service to be a bit creative on it, and not go down the old route of stick and no carrot.  

In fact, I’m hoping there’ll be no stick, because I don’t think punishing parents, for example, is the solution.   

So I’ve got two things I would do if I was running this new service. Which might sound like a weird way of going about it, and, if I’m honest, these ideas generally go against how I've thought about school for the whole time I’ve been a parent. But here goes.   

If I was in charge of the new school attendance service, I would start by looking around the world to see what has worked already. And I would try to get schools here on board with something they trialled at a school in the UK that actually got some results.   

Starting the school day later.   

This was at a high school, and what they did is they gave 800 students a late start. They didn't start classes until 10am, and absenteeism went down by 27%.  

So that’s one thing I’d do. But I would go a bit further than that and I’d try to get schools on board with starting at around 11:30am. You’d probably have to limit it to high schools for all sorts of practical reasons, like parents and caregivers needing to get to work and all that. 

And I’d make it an 11:30 start because we saw after the earthquakes how much better teenagers whose high schools had to share campuses and were only physically at school for half the day did in their NCEA results. 

I know it’s very easy to say or think that kids who wag school are all the same. That they’re no hopers, or that their parents are no hopers. But we need to think about some of the practical reasons why kids aren’t turning up as often as we think they should, or not at all.  

And if teenagers, especially, need to sleep in —as we know they do— then let them, knowing that they have to be at school later in the morning.  

The other thing I would do if I was running this new truancy agency is I would encourage schools not to be so hellbent on insisting kids having to be in the actual classroom. 

Which probably sounds like a weird approach for someone given the job of getting more kids turning up at school, but I think we need to decide whether we’re going to focus on attendance or participation. They’re two different things and, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll probably agree that participating in the education system in some way, shape or form is far more important —far better— than just turning up and attending.  

So it’s attendance versus participation.     

As a parent, I always wanted my kids physically at school because I think they learn a lot about dealing with people actually being there. But if you’ve got a child who just can’t cope with that —for whatever reason— then why shouldn’t they be able to participate in the education system by working from home?  

Why should they be labelled a truant? Shouldn't we do what we can to make sure they get an education? That they participate? Of course we should. 

And if the best way or the most appropriate way for them to get that education seems a bit weird to some of us —those of us who think you can only be educated at a school with