Waatea News Column: Imagine if we spent $74million on free school lunches rather than Truancy Officers?
The Government have announced an extra $ 74 million on Truancy Officers in an attempt to reel in New Zealand’s disastrous truancy rates.
I am not convinced that is the best use of money.
Many of our children are missing out on school due to the enormous disruption of Covid, many have mental health troubles thanks to that disruption. Many are locked into the economics of food inflation which sees them working and providing for the bills rather than going to school, many are holding on by the thinnest of strands.
Many are having to be parents in homes with broken adults.
If only we could also find another $ 74 million to spend on free breakfasts and free school lunches to counter the poverty pressures rather than just Truancy Officers who coerce attendance.
Rather than seek to resolve the underlying pressures causing Truancy, we simply seek more people to chase Truants.
We are better than this!
We should have the capacity to attempt to solve the problem rather than just cope with the problem which seems to be the constant default position of this country’s social policies.
Our kids deserve a better thought-out policy than simply chasing them down and frog-marching them to school.
This is the sort of social policy I expect from the National, it is not Labour social policy at all.
First published on Waatea News.
It doesn’t have to be an ‘either’ ‘or’ scenario, why not have both? Seventy-four million isn’t a huge amount, less than a third of the money spent on immigrant John Key’s wasted flag referendum, when changing the New Zealand flag was the only legacy which he seemed to care about leaving.
Truancy is a complex issue. Our children are our future. Any money spent on their well-being and getting them into classrooms is money well spent. A Commissioner for Children would be an excellent idea too.
Good comments .Education is the main tool society has to break the poverty cycle. We are a small wealthy country that could attract the best teachers from all over the world to pass on their knowledge to our children .We would then attract businesses that need those brains and pay good wages for them . Higher wages high tax take better for the people a true win win.
Trevor. We need a different, more innovative approach, eg something like Queen Camilla has initiated in the UK, focused on child literacy, rather than just on getting kids into schools. Unfortunately it’s unlikely to come from the hapless Education Department, seemingly more influenced by Jan Logie type philosophy rather than what education is meant to be about. Even a skills-focused approach could be a useful sort of compromise, but just the sight of the plonkers from the Education Review Office makes this seem an unrealistic expectation. Once again, it is the children who miss out, and the country missing out with potential talent wasted.
Everyone’s also forgetting the assault on psyches by the pandemic and lockdowns, and insecurities at every level, except for the clueless privileged politicians, protected and buffered on every side.
Well, this is great. That’s extra jobs, 740 truancy officers with $100,000 salaries and the kids will be back in school and it will save the jobs of the many teachers who would become unemployed if truancy remained at the currently appalling rates of 20-40%.
Healthy school lunches, do that too.
Isn’t there something awry with the sentence “Imagine if we spent $74 million on free school lunches” ?