Kelvin Davis on Truancy

Labour MP Kelvin Davis has said a lot of things on education, and Maori issues, I agree with. Labour will inevitably become Government again at some stage, and he looks to be potentially a better Education Minister than Maharey and Mallard were.

But I do take issue with his blog post on truancy:

So thirty thousand students a day are not at school. Sounds worrying. I guess 100% attendance is the aultimate goal.

But let’s look at that 30,000 figure. It represents 4% of the total number of students in compulsory education.

So far, so good. His maths is better than Trevor’s.

If a child is away for 4% of the school year that means they are absent an average of less than two days a term.

Now yes on average that is around two days a term, but expressed as eight days a year, and that is a lot – in fact it is around one day a month, excluding the four months of holidays.

I don’t think having a child truant one day a month is anywhere near acceptable.

But even if it was, I think with respect Kelvin misses the bigger issue. This will not be all 750,000 students equalling wagging one day a month. It is probably 50% of students never wagging, 40% wagging one day a month and 10% wagging nine days a month, or around half the year.

I don’t recall when Anne Tolley said she got the figures she’s quoting, but if it was last year we need to remember there was a swine flu scare and the Ministry of Health was asking parents to keep kids home if they had a sniffle.

When I was a Principal, teachers had to mark in the attendance register whether a student’s absence was justified or unjustified.

Justified meant the child was usually sick or at a bereavement. Unjustified meant they were truant.

I’d be interested in whether she’s done any analysis of justified vs unjustified absences. She needs to realise kids do get sick at times and some non-attendance is expected.

I think this is a red herring. Tolley’s press release clearly talks about kids being truant – not just absent.

Now the release links to the actual study, and the study is clear that the 4.2% absentee rate is for unjustified absences. The total absentee rate is in fact 11.6%.

And they even look in the study at the swine flu issue:

Therefore it is likely that the differences observed in the 2009 survey, compared to previous surveys in 2006 and 2004, are not likely to be due to the increased absence rates caused by the influenza (H1N1) 09 Swine Flu pandemic alert.

So Mr Davis really hasn’t done his homework here. He made wrong assumptions, and suggested the Minister did not know the difference between justified and unjustified.

One hundred percent attendance is desirable, but it appears Anne Tolley is trying to over-egg the situation, and my guess is she’s doing it to divert attention from her National Standards shambles.

Quite the opposite. Labour have under-egged the problem. The overall non attendance rate is in fact 11% – that means on average a kid is absent every fortnight!

I do hope Labour have a more inspiring truancy policy than saying it’s not a big issue.