Today, Jan Tinetti, the Associate Education Minister, is launching a nationwide school attendance campaign.
It's called Every School Day Is A Big Day. School attendance has been a long-term challenge, declining across the board since 2015, and that trend was of course further accelerated by Covid-19. Only two in five kids attend regularly. 40 percent.
Even more of a concern is that only 5 percent of Kiwis consider attendance a top of mind issue. 5 percent.
Tinetti says she launched the attendance and engagement strategy in June of this year, which set some tough targets, and she wants to see the number of kids attending school regularly increase from 59.7 percent in 2021 to 70 percent in 2024, 75 percent in 2026.
It’s going to be complicated; it is going to be tough because there are a number of issues at play here.
We have poverty and we have housing insecurity, which makes it difficult to get kids to attend school regularly.
We've had Covid and the school closures; the online learning has meant kids have got out of the habit of attending school.
Parents have got out of the habit of getting them up, dressed and ready to go. Some children are anxious about going back to school because of the climate of fear that surrounded Covid.
There's bullying. You're not going to want to go to school if your life is going to be made misery and hell.
Can we all have a show of hands of how many think that this education system as it stands now is failing our children?
They have been let down by so many decisions made over the last couple of years. We need to give them better. They deserve better.
Right now, any child that succeeds at school and comes out with incredible qualifications and is ready to face the world is the outlier, they are the exception, not the rule.
Every child deserves to have a decent education and we are failing. We give ourselves an ‘F’ for failure, because that’s what we're delivering.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.