Principals Welcome Truancy Funding Boost

NZPF welcomes the announcement by Minister Hipkins for a $52m urgent response fund, to address the issue of young people with a history of poor school attendance.

Schools uniformly report poor service from existing truancy and attendance service providers. Frustration with slow and over-burdened attendance service providers has reached a crescendo. Urgent improvement is required.

If government is serious about improving school attendance then principals must be given the funding to employ their own locally managed attendance personnel.

Schools know the students who are frequently truant and are best placed to make the connections and build the relationships to address attendance concerns.

NZPF calls on Government to disestablish the current attendance services and reinvest funds in front line staffing that every school can deploy in their own local communities.

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