$52m to get students back in classroom
A third to a half of students at some high schools have still not come back
The Government has created a $52 million fund to get as many students as possible back into the classroom after disruptions caused by Covid-19.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins says the $52m urgent response fund will allow schools to get additional resources like bringing in more teacher-aide hours to work with atrisk children and funding for home visits for students with a history of poor attendance.
The fund can also be tapped into to help get social workers into work with refugee families.
A third to a half of students at some South Auckland high schools have still not come back to school two months after lockdown ended — stark evidence of the effects of Covid-19 and the recession it has sparked.
School principals say some students have had to get jobs to support their families, and some families can no longer afford bus fares, lunches or uniforms for their children.
Some families are also still afraid to send their children back to school in case they pick up the coronavirus or other diseases and infect vulnerable members of the family.
Kiri Turketo, principal of Decile-1
Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in O¯tara, said attendance had ranged between 48 per cent and 66 per cent since normal schooling resumed at alert level 2 on May 18.
“A lot of it is now through the economy. Parents have lost their jobs, or families have been banding together to share resources, which means school is not a priority for a lot of families,” she said. “Unfortunately I have lost some good students to having to go into the workforce.”
Hipkins said the Covid-19 crisis had put stress on a lot of families, as well as students, which had then resulted in poor attendance when schools were allowed to open again.
“While we are seeing improvements under alert level 1, Ministry of Education data shows that attendance rates in our schools sit at about 85 per cent and 50 per cent in our early childhood education centres.
“It is much lower in some schools and early learning services. We have to do better,” he said.
The funding, for this year and next year, is for centre-based learning services and schools — from early childhood education centres, kura kaupapa, primary schools to secondary education institutions.
Aorere College principal Greg Pierce, who leads the AimHi cluster of nine low-decile South Auckland high schools, said one other school in the group was “around the 50 per cent
attendance rate” and four were between 50 and 80 per cent.
Three others, including Aorere, are more or less back to normal.
“We are normally 85-ish, we are 83 to 84-ish at the moment,” he said.
Levonne Grant of Strive Community Trust, who manages the school attendance service for Ma¯ngere, Papatoetoe and O¯tara, said schools have referred 546 missing children to her service since May 18, of whom 310 were still not at school.
“That’s tripled. It’s more than we’ve ever had,” she said.
She said “clusters of families” were
staying in one house to save rent, and were scared that one child could bring an illness home and infect everyone. “I’ve been to one house where there were nine kids came to the door wrapped like Eskimos, with pink noses. If one’s sick, they’re all sick,” she said.
“We see what we call ‘housesurfing’, where families are transitional from house to house. This is where a lot of families are unsure about enrolling their child in school because of the cost of uniforms and stationery when they are waiting for permanent residence.
“We have got a lot of the dads at home now. They have been made jobless, they are now raising their families, but it’s very hard for them to change their roles. Parents are focusing on their own primary roles — that’s like, when are we going to get another job?”
Many schools are also reporting more children being absent because of illness because of Ministry of Health advice that anyone with even a “sniffle” should stay at home.
Nationally, 86.4 per cent of school students attended school each day last week on average, only 2.2 points
below the 88.6 per cent average daily attendance in term 2 last year.
The drop from last year was biggest for decile 1 schools (down 3.1 points to 80.4 per cent) and for Ma¯ori students (down 3.6 points to 81.1 per cent). The drop was smallest for decile 10 schools (down 1.4 per cent to 89.8 per cent) and for Asian students (down 0.8 points to 90.6 per cent).
Another $16m is being put aside to help teachers and other school staff directly. The money will go towards workplace assistance and counselling support services for the education workforce — as well as their families. It
is set to benefit up to 10,000 additional teachers and other school staff over the next two years.
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“Teachers, principals, support staff and centre leaders have done a great job during the pandemic and they’ll continue to play a vital [role] in recovery,” Hipkins said.
“During Covid, stress levels among families and students have increased.
“In some cases, the links families have with schools have been put under extra pressure and we need to make sure students are connected to their learning.”