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Speaker 1: Chronic absence in our schools has doubled over the past decade.

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Speaker 1: The Education Review Office says we're at crisis point as

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Speaker 1: one in ten students missed thirty percent or more of

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Speaker 1: Term two this year. I found the cost of tax

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Speaker 1: payers as massive as I mentioned earlier. When a chronically

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Speaker 1: absent student reaches age twenty five, on average, they will

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Speaker 1: cost the government three times as much as someone who

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Speaker 1: regularly attends school. Adam de Cork is the Tupurrangi Attendance

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Speaker 1: Service practice lead. He joins us this morning.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, Hey, good morning Ryan, thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me. Adam, tell me what your

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Speaker 1: job is. Do you go out and find students who

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Speaker 1: are absent?

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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

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Speaker 2: point four staff that are responsible for two hundred and

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Speaker 2: fifty schools across Canterbury and our job is to go

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Speaker 2: out and not necessarily find We get allocated cases through

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Speaker 2: a Ministry of Education website called ATHA that's a database,

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Speaker 2: but a lot of the times, as the report mentions,

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Speaker 2: we cannot find those students and that is a huge

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Speaker 2: amount of time that is lost with our staff, and

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Speaker 2: so that's one of the issues that report highlights.

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Speaker 1: So you go, how can you not find them? Do

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Speaker 1: they not have an address or is the address wrong?

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Speaker 2: That is frequently the case, and is the report mentioned

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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

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Speaker 2: not a waste of time because those kids need to

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Speaker 2: support the most, but we just need systems that are

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Speaker 2: a bit more efficient to make our job easier to

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Speaker 2: do and to find those students faster.

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Speaker 1: When you do find them, what are they doing?

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Speaker 2: So if you look at what we're dealing with a

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Speaker 2: cross cases, we're dealing with a lot of intergenerational trauma, addiction,

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Speaker 2: mental health, and the effects of colonization, and so there

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Speaker 2: is just a different mindset of what's important in regards

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Speaker 2: to education, and frequently in that space that's called the

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Speaker 2: non enrolled student space, those kids just haven't been engaged

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Speaker 2: with education for quite some time, and so our goal

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Speaker 2: is to kind of get the family back on board

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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.

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Speaker 1: So are they you turn up when you do find them.

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Speaker 1: They're at a house somewhere. Are they stoned or high

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Speaker 1: or what? Are they just sitting around? Are they working?

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Speaker 2: No, that's that's kind of that stereotypical view of what

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Speaker 2: those folks are are in and that's not always the case.

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Speaker 2: A lot of the times, like I mentioned before, we're

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Speaker 2: dealing with families that it intergenerational trauma and there's a

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Speaker 2: lot of things going on in their lives in the background,

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Speaker 2: and education is just not a top priority. So you know,

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Speaker 2: we always go in with benefit of the doubts and

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Speaker 2: very rarely is it just a lazy family who doesn't

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Speaker 2: want to go to school.

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Speaker 1: Very rarely that case, I totally understand that, But I'm

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Speaker 1: just curious, what are they doing if not school?

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Speaker 2: That's that's a great question, And a lot of the

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Speaker 2: times nothing. A lot of the times it's very just

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Speaker 2: based around playing video games and hanging out at home, right,

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Speaker 2: And that's a real loss for that child because, as

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Speaker 2: you mentioned before, a kid who's not at school by

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Speaker 2: the time their twenty is costing three times the amounts

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Speaker 2: for government as opposed to a kid who is going

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Speaker 2: to school. And so if you look at developmentally as well,

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Speaker 2: that's just a massive loss for that child in the

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Speaker 2: potential future.

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Speaker 1: Oh, it's terrible, terrible for everybody involved, including all of us.

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Speaker 1: What absolutely what is the you know you said, there's

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Speaker 1: something you can do to make your systems more efficient

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Speaker 1: once you know at finding them. What's your success rate

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Speaker 1: like at getting those kids, those chronic ones actually back

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Speaker 1: into school.

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Speaker 2: It varies widely across the country. Here in Canterbury, when

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Speaker 2: we are able to make engagement with the school in

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Speaker 2: a student in that non enrolled space, we do have

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Speaker 2: a pretty high success rate. But the report also highlights

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Speaker 2: that piece that a kid who engages with our service

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Speaker 2: usually will go back to school those first couple of months,

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Speaker 2: but over time we'll fall back off right And for us,

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Speaker 2: that's the huge loss is a lack of resources and funding.

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Speaker 2: As I mention prior, we only have seven point four

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Speaker 2: fte across two hundred and fifty schools and so we're

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Speaker 2: massively underfunded and for us, a real simple fix would

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Speaker 2: be to have more funding, and that's what the report recommend.

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Speaker 1: It's quite evidence at the bottom of the cliff, though,

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Speaker 1: isn't it, Because as you said once, once the disengagement

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Speaker 1: has begun, it's very hard to get it back on track.

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Speaker 1: I mean you almost need to have all of that

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Speaker 1: funding going at five year olds, you know, because.

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Speaker 2: That is absolutely that is part of our trias processes

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Speaker 2: working with that younger age group. But you know, for us,

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Speaker 2: if we did have more funding and we did have

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Speaker 2: more case managers working on those cases, we could receive

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Speaker 2: them more quickly. And the report highlights that as well,

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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,

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Speaker 2: have a wait list of hundreds and so if we

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Speaker 2: had more staff we could definitely make that happen. But

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Speaker 2: for us, it's a real loss and we definitely want

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Speaker 2: to be there for those families that want our support.

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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

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Speaker 1: attendance service practice lead. As you said, they have a

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Speaker 1: lot of trouble finding these chronically truant kids, but then

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Speaker 1: also the success rate of keeping them in school long

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Speaker 1: term is not great either.

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Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live

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