Cost of ignoring troubled youth too high

Media Release
29 September 2009

Cost of ignoring troubled youth too high

At least five percent of the students in our schools need specialist support that teachers aren’t trained to provide, PPTA executive member Ana Rees said.

Student behaviour issues have a significant impact on teacher and student wellbeing she said - during the opening speech for a paper on student behaviour at PPTA’s annual conference.

The paper - 80, 15, 5 percent: what we know; what they need -.was developed by a working group that was proposed at the 2008 annual conference and influenced by the Hutt Valley, Wairarapa and Wellington regions. .

The Taumata Whanonga behaviour summit held in March this year was also one of the 2008 conference recommendations. The summit acknowledged that schools were not solely responsible for the wellbeing of students.

“Their wellbeing is a community concern, of which we are one part… the earlier we can offer specialist support for kids and families with behaviour issues, the better their life chances and the lower the burden on the taxpayer,” she said.

The Ministry of Education is currently developing a behavior action plan as a result of the summit – but to date this has not been released.

Rees advocated developing effective cross-sector relationships, such as CYFS

“We know that school staffspend hours working to co-ordinate external relationships, appointments and arrangements with social workers, drug counselors, police and other non-schools service providers,” she said.

Recommendation five of the paper recognises this and looks to create a tagged time allowance for support teachers already doing this important work

Rees spoke of the importance of Alternative Education centres, which provide second chances for young people who do not cope at schools.

“We know they do a great job – we know there aren’t enough places for the kids who need them – we know, that with better funding and a proper staffing formula, these centres would do an even better job…. We wait for the minister to release the findings of the review of alternative education, and call on the government to strengthen this vital service,” she said.

“Ignoring difficult kids, leaving them in classrooms, blaming teachers and schools, is now widely understand to be a dumb idea.
“In a country with imprisonment rates second only to America, and with up to a quarter of its prisoners in need of mental health care, rather than incarceration - the time to act is now.

“The social and economic costs of ignoring these young people are simply too high.”

80,15,5 percent: What we know, what they need can be found in full on the annual conference page of the PPTA website at:

http://www.ppta.org.nz/index.php/annual-conference

PPTA annual conference is being held at the Brentwood Hotel in Kilbirnie Wellington and will run until Thursday October 2.

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