A Northland principal says Associate Education Minister David Seymour’s prescription for truancy isn’t done now because it doesn’t work.
The ACT leader intends to impose a mandatory three-step process for schools to deal with persistent non-attendance, culminating in taking parents to court.
Pat Newman from Hora Hora School in Whangārei says schools are working hard to increase attendance after the pandemic using a variety of strategies.
Adding fines to the mix is an attack on the poor.
“The rich that take their kids out and go off to France or Gold Coast or that, they can afford a fine. It’s not going to worry them. But the ones that can’t afford it are the ones he’s aiming at. Ant this guy sits in Wellington and thinks he knows it – he knows nothing about how to handle it. He’s never listened to any advice from those at the coal face and he expects us to do more and more with little resourcing,” Mr Newman says.
Mr Newman says he laughed at David Seymour’s suggestion that police and Oranga Tamariki should become involved when Police don’t have enough staff to respond to burglaries.
