A $74 million package to address school attendance is being welcomed by secondary teachers as a step in the right direction, but they say they need more support.

Education Minister Jan Tinetti announced on Tuesday that the Government has launched a plan to get young people back into the classroom with 82 new Attendance Officer roles established in schools and more support for the Attendance Service.

The allocation of the 82 new roles is being worked through now by the Ministry of Education, says MOE Operations and Integration Leader Sean Teddy when asked how many of those would be introduced into the Bay of Plenty and what the spread would be across Bay of Plenty schools and colleges.

'The focus will be on students who have a low or declining attendance rates. These students are in primary, intermediate and secondary schools and kura,” says Teddy.

'We know how important it is for young people to be at school and learning, so the Government is putting every effort into making sure they are. We are going back to basics on attendance,” says Tinetti.

'This $74 million package puts resources on the ground to support schools and students and make a difference to attendance rates this year. It will also make sure we have better data that is less likely to be misconstrued, and helps us to focus our efforts in the right place.”

PPTA Te Wehengarua acting president Chris Abercrombie says more school attendance officers are a welcome addition but schools need more pastoral and guidance staff to be the ambulance at the top of the cliff.

'We desperately need more pastoral and guidance staff in our schools to help identify the students who are struggling, for a variety of reasons, and work with these rangatahi and their families through the problems and issuses and keep them engaged at school – before we lose them,” says Abercrombie.

The new Attendance Officers will work with students who have low or declining attendance rates, to ensure they are going to school every day unless they are sick.

They will work alongside parents and schools to turn around attendance rates.

Tinetti says the Attendance Service already works with students who are chronically absent, or not enrolled at all, and this package will help it to support 3000 more young people.

'The decline in school attendance began in 2015, but the pandemic has exacerbated the issue. We need to be doing more to help schools and kura support students who are not attending or engaged in education,” says Tinetti.

She says this package builds on the $88 million package announced last year, consisting of the Regional Response Fund and direct investment into programmes that help young people engage in learning, as well as the ongoing work through the Attendance Strategy and attendance campaigns launched last year.

'We have seen results already through the Regional Response Fund, which has showed that early intervention with students whose school attendance is falling can make a huge difference,” says Tinetti.

'So far, at least $6.3 million of the $10 million Regional Response Fund (RRF) has been paid out, been approved, or is awaiting approval. This covers at least 130 initiatives involving over 445 schools.”

Abercrombie says schools have pleaded with the government for more support, and highlights that the relationships with students' whānau and caregivers are hugely important.

'But teachers simply don't have the time or the special skills that are often needed. Teachers and principals have implored the government, through our current collective agreement negotiations, to give schools more pastoral staffing support,” says Abercrombie.

'We also urge the Government to invest more in redesigning alternative education and providing an end-to-end system of support for children and young people at risk of disengaging from education. It is crucial that there are effective educational options for those young people who are most in need.”

'This is a complex issue that will require the whole community, including parents, to fix but the Government is committed to doing everything it can turn attendance and engagement in school around,” says Tinetti.

'We know that there are many reasons why a child might not show up to school, which is why we're also continuing our initiatives that are focused on removing barriers to education such as free period products, free healthy school lunches, school donations, preventing bullying and redesigning our curriculum.

'These measures will, over time, ensure that young people right across the country are attending, want to be at school and are on the right path to success in their education,” says Tinetti.