Opportunity for forgotten teens

The system set up to support teenagers kicked out of mainstream schools is the latest tranche of the education sector in line for a shake-up, as the Government reveals plans to change a model it says is ‘‘not working’’ for at risk youth.

Providers of alternative education from around the country have been called to a meeting in Wellington today by the Associate Minister of Education, Tracey Martin, to thrash out how to improve outcomes for the country’s most disadvantaged children.

Alternative education centres cater for 13-16 year olds who are frequently absent from school, suspended or excluded; with numbers of the latter two rising since 2016.

‘‘They’re supposed to be there for a maximum of two years, and then they’re supposed to be all fixed and put back into mainstream school,’’ Martin said. ‘‘That’s not happening.’’

Too few teenagers enrolled at alternative education centres were leaving with qualifications, she said.

Around 37 per cent of students achieved NCEA level 2 or above by age 18, compared with 82 per cent of the total student population, Ministry of Education figures showed.

Students excluded from school under the age of 13, meanwhile, did not have a ‘‘safe place’’ to go, Martin said.

‘‘They are just being put out of school, and some of our families are being forced into a home schooling situation, or there are very long periods of time where those children are not in a school environment.

‘‘They are not being educated because it takes so long to convince another school to take them.’’

More involvement was needed from schools and agencies to ensure disadvantaged young people did not continue to be sidelined from education, she said.

‘‘You can’t just wash your hands of them.’’

In Nelson, Marlborough and the West Coast, stand-downs were at their highest level since 2013.

There were 619 stand-downs in 2017 compared to 477 the year before, an ‘‘age standardised rate’’ of 21.7 per 1000 students, according to the latest Ministry of Education statistics.

Alternative education provider, Youth Nelson, took struggling students from the three high schools in Nelson city.

Its managing school, Nayland College, was ‘‘quite rare’’ in giving excluded students the opportunity to ‘‘work their way back in", the centre’s manager Maree Shalders said.

Fifteen students were enrolled at Youth Nelson at the start of the year, twice the number than normal; a rise Shalders put down to times being harder for families.

The change the service most needed was more funding, she said.

While Youth Nelson was one of the best performing providers of the more than 80 nationwide (based on criteria including achievement in NCEA credits and transition back to school), it had not had a funding increase in the 20 years since its doors opened.

‘‘These guys are the highest needs. They have the highest risk ... and they have the least resources spent on them.’’

The centre provided lessons through Te Kura correspondence, but limited resources meant students didn’t get the kind of opportunities mainstream schools could offer in areas like technology, Shalders said.

The success of the service relied on the commitment of staff who were underpaid, and support from Nelson City Council, she said.

‘‘Definitely, we need more support in the way of resources ... the trouble is everybody’s willing to help, but they don’t have the time.’’

Representatives would speak at Friday’s meeting from an initiative in Auckland, which co-ordinated support and services for at risk young people both in alternative education and of all ages at school.

The Managed Moves programme was introduced in 2016 through a Secondary School Principals’ Trust in Waitakere.

‘‘There were a lot of kids in alterative education who really shouldn’t have been there,’’ said Janette Searle, the programme’s co-founder. ‘‘Mainstream was the right place for them, but because there was no way of supporting either them or the school they were being kicked out.

Of the 73 kids involved in the first year, 20 went back to mainstream school compared to ‘‘hardly any’’ before, Searle said.