Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Adam Duchac: Tupuranga Attendance Service Practice Lead on the chronic absence crisis

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Adam Duchac: Tupuranga Attendance Service Practice Lead on the chronic absence crisis · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chronic absence in our schools has doubled over the past decade.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The Education Review Office says we're at crisis point as
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: one in ten students missed thirty percent or more of
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Term two this year. I found the cost of tax
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: payers as massive as I mentioned earlier. When a chronically
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: absent student reaches age twenty five, on average, they will
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: cost the government three times as much as someone who
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: regularly attends school. Adam de Cork is the Tupurrangi Attendance
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Service practice lead. He joins us this morning.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Good morning, Hey, good morning Ryan, thanks for having me.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me. Adam, tell me what your
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: job is. Do you go out and find students who
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: are absent?
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Sure? So, I co lead to Guranga Attendance Service with
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  Speaker 2: market Ahnton James, and we have a team of seven
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: point four staff that are responsible for two hundred and
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: fifty schools across Canterbury and our job is to go
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: out and not necessarily find We get allocated cases through
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: a Ministry of Education website called ATHA that's a database,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: but a lot of the times, as the report mentions,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: we cannot find those students and that is a huge
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: amount of time that is lost with our staff, and
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: so that's one of the issues that report highlights.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: So you go, how can you not find them? Do
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: they not have an address or is the address wrong?
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: That is frequently the case, and is the report mentioned
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: It takes a lot of collaboration with other agencies to
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  Speaker 2: find those students, and that for us is it's definitely
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: not a waste of time because those kids need to
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: support the most, but we just need systems that are
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: a bit more efficient to make our job easier to
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: do and to find those students faster.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: When you do find them, what are they doing?
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: So if you look at what we're dealing with a
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: cross cases, we're dealing with a lot of intergenerational trauma, addiction,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: mental health, and the effects of colonization, and so there
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: is just a different mindset of what's important in regards
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: to education, and frequently in that space that's called the
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: non enrolled student space, those kids just haven't been engaged
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: with education for quite some time, and so our goal
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: is to kind of get the family back on board
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: and give them some options of education. And what that
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  Speaker 2: means for each family is very different.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: So are they you turn up when you do find them.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: They're at a house somewhere. Are they stoned or high
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: or what? Are they just sitting around? Are they working?
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: No, that's that's kind of that stereotypical view of what
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: those folks are are in and that's not always the case.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: A lot of the times, like I mentioned before, we're
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: dealing with families that it intergenerational trauma and there's a
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: lot of things going on in their lives in the background,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: and education is just not a top priority. So you know,
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: we always go in with benefit of the doubts and
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: very rarely is it just a lazy family who doesn't
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: want to go to school.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Very rarely that case, I totally understand that, But I'm
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: just curious, what are they doing if not school?
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: That's that's a great question, And a lot of the
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: times nothing. A lot of the times it's very just
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: based around playing video games and hanging out at home, right,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: And that's a real loss for that child because, as
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: you mentioned before, a kid who's not at school by
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: the time their twenty is costing three times the amounts
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: for government as opposed to a kid who is going
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: to school. And so if you look at developmentally as well,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: that's just a massive loss for that child in the
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: potential future.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's terrible, terrible for everybody involved, including all of us.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: What absolutely what is the you know you said, there's
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: something you can do to make your systems more efficient
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: once you know at finding them. What's your success rate
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: like at getting those kids, those chronic ones actually back
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: into school.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: It varies widely across the country. Here in Canterbury, when
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: we are able to make engagement with the school in
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: a student in that non enrolled space, we do have
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: a pretty high success rate. But the report also highlights
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: that piece that a kid who engages with our service
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: usually will go back to school those first couple of months,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: but over time we'll fall back off right And for us,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: that's the huge loss is a lack of resources and funding.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: As I mention prior, we only have seven point four
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: fte across two hundred and fifty schools and so we're
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: massively underfunded and for us, a real simple fix would
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: be to have more funding, and that's what the report recommend.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: It's quite evidence at the bottom of the cliff, though,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: isn't it, Because as you said once, once the disengagement
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: has begun, it's very hard to get it back on track.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I mean you almost need to have all of that
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: funding going at five year olds, you know, because.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: That is absolutely that is part of our trias processes
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: working with that younger age group. But you know, for us,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: if we did have more funding and we did have
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: more case managers working on those cases, we could receive
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: them more quickly. And the report highlights that as well,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: that cases are not seen to in a timely manner,
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  Speaker 2: and that's purely because of case load. We for example,
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: have a wait list of hundreds and so if we
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: had more staff we could definitely make that happen. But
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: for us, it's a real loss and we definitely want
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: to be there for those families that want our support.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for you Tom This morning Adam
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  Speaker 1: to Cork with us. He is the to putting your
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: attendance service practice lead. As you said, they have a
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: lot of trouble finding these chronically truant kids, but then
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: also the success rate of keeping them in school long
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: term is not great either.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 5:15
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• 5:18
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