Getting Kids Back In School
Associate Minister of Education
Frontline attendance services will receive a significant funding boost so they can support more schools and reach double the students, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says.
Budget 2025 includes a $140 million package to improve attendance over the next four years. This includes around $123 million for the delivery of a new attendance service and almost $17 million to support and strengthen frontline attendance services.
'Frontline attendance services will be more accountable, better at effectively managing cases, and data driven in their responses. To achieve this, they will soon have access to a new case management system and better data monitoring, and their contracts will be more closely monitored,' Mr Seymour says.
'In 2024 the Education Review Office (ERO) completed a report into attendance services which found that the system designed to get students back in school was ineffective and required substantial reform. For example, the current system fails to consistently improve student attendance because funding varies between providers. Many services are under resourced and cannot meet demand.
The 2024 ERO report made four recommendations for a successful new attendance service:
Having effective targeted supports in place to address chronic absence
Increasing the focus on retaining students on their return
Putting in place an efficient and effective model
Strengthening how we prevent students becoming chronically absent.
'The new attendance services model addresses the first three recommendations. The wider attendance action plan, which includes the requirement for schools to have their own attendance management plan, aligned with the Stepped Attendance Response (STAR) in place by Term 1 of 2026, will address all four,' Mr Seymour says.
'Service providers will work with families, local communities and social agencies to deliver comprehensive services. The level of service provided will depend on the need. It will range from advice and support to schools, to intensive case management of students.
'Schools with the highest numbers of chronically absent students will be able to apply for funding for an in-school service. The schools in this bracket tend to be ones in higher Equity Index (EQI) groups, facing the most socio-economic barriers.'
Transitioning to the new Attendance Service will begin at the end of this year and the new services will become fully operational from early 2026. The Ministry of Education will work with providers to ensure the transition is smooth, and that students continue to receive the services they need during this period.
'Attending school is the first step towards achieving positive educational outcomes. Positive educational outcomes lead to better health, higher incomes, better job stability and greater participation within communities. These are opportunities that every student deserves,' Mr Seymour says.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsroom
4 hours ago
- Newsroom
Parliament's law-making watchdog warns against Regulatory Standards Bill
A group of high-level public servants and private sector lawyers tasked with ensuring the government of the day creates good legislation has voiced concerns over David Seymour's Regulatory Standards Bill. The Legislative Design and Advisory Committee wrote in a submission on the Act leader's so-called good lawmaking bill that although it agreed there was much that could – and should – be done to improve legislative quality, the committee had 'misgivings about the capacity of this bill to offer improvement'.
Newsroom
4 hours ago
- Newsroom
High-flyer mums flex their parenting muscle
A year ago, a group of rich-lister mums met with other high fliers from all walks of life and political hues with one thing in mind. Many were strangers to each other but the thing that united them was the push to bring in a law to get under-16-year-olds off social media. Such is the power of the group B416 and their cause that politicians from all corners came along to their launch last month, including Act's David Seymour, who doesn't support a social media ban. It took place just days after National's Catherine Wedd put forward her Social Media Age-Restricted Users Bill, a private member's bill. Since the launch, the move has faced criticism of moral panic, overreach and that a ban will risk the lives of vulnerable young people. But B416, which is co chaired by entrepreneur Cecilia Robinson and includes multi millionaire toy maker Anna Mowbray, says it is time to listen to parents who want to protect their children from social media harm. Founding member Malindi MacLean, who heads Outward Bound, says a lot of the criticism is from people who are not parents. 'It's really important to keep [in mind] the lived experience of parents. They are day in, day out experiencing the impact of social media addiction, or addictive behaviours of their children. 'A parent who has just been dealing with their teenager who is self harming or has sextortion or dealing with cyber bullying … it's not something that you can argue with.' Those arguing against a potential law that would force social media giants to use age verification measures on under 16s include retired district court judge, David Harvey; youth mental health activist Jazz Thornton; Victoria University media lecturer Alex Beattie and the online counselling service Youthline. Judge Harvey says the proposed bill is flawed and could get the Government in trouble with freedom-of-expression laws. There's also a risk it will exclude the likes of YouTube, he says. Thornton believes a blanket ban will cause harm to the most vulnerable children and even lead to deaths, while Beattie argues social media can be a good communication tool for children and parents, and is not an addiction like smoking. MacLean says she welcomes the debate but her group wants progress. Hence the extensive billboard and social media campaign. She says the time and resources put into the campaign would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the influential group has tapped into many communities for contributions and support. 'That just shows the appetite for change. The other thing is we've had a lot of support from organisations pro bono because most of them are human beings who also understand the issues.' Wedd's bill is in the biscuit tin in Parliament which means it may never see the light of day before the next election. That's not good enough for B416, which wants to see a policy by the end of the year, following Australia's world-first law and trials of the age-verification technology already underway. Tech expert Danu Abeysuriya of digital firm Rush tells The Detail how the technology could work and why it is important for New Zealand to follow Australia and others. 'We are a small nation and we don't represent a lot of revenue for large tech companies like Google, Facebook or X or Twitter. They focus on social media and to those companies our ad revenue is relatively small. 'Whatever we have to do we should still attempt to be practical otherwise we risk being alienated from those platforms. The balancing act is aligning what we do with what the rest of the world does.' Abeysuriya says there are a number of age-verification options but one of the simplest would be a digital token bought from the Warehouse, the local petrol station or even the child's school. Other technology could be used to put children off using social media, such as slowing down internet traffic. In this case the government would mandate Internet Service Providers such as One NZ to run traffic at half speed in specific time periods. 'It creates a bit of friction,' says Abeysuriya. 'If the TikTok video loads really slowly the kids might not watch the TikTok video, they might do something else like read a book.' He says the solutions are ideas and nothing will be perfect. 'The bravery to move is the thing that needs to happen here.' Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
The Spinoff
5 hours ago
- The Spinoff
Echo Chamber: The trouble with taking David Seymour at his word
If the Act Party leader misspoke in a forest and no one was around to hear it, would it still make a sound? Echo Chamber is The Spinoff's dispatch from the press gallery, recapping sessions in the House. Columns are written by politics reporter Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Wellington editor Joel MacManus. A long weekend stumbled into a short week back in the House, where a Mad Hatter call of 'change places!' has seen NZ First and the Act Party swap sides at the tea party. Over the weekend, some 642km north, NZ First leader Winston Peters' reins of power as deputy prime minister were handed over to Act leader David Seymour, who celebrated the occasion in typical low-key style: with an Auckland brunch for fans of David Seymour to pay their respects to David Seymour. Peters, sat in the south end of the chamber, now rests in a no man's land two seats away from Te Pāti Māori, where co-leader Rawiri Waititi shot glances to his koro from up north throughout the session. Meanwhile Seymour, at the prime minister's side, whispered sweet nothings into Christopher Luxon's ear then flipped through documents throughout the circus, with three full glasses of water at his side. Before Tuesday's question time began, Te Pāti Māori's Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke called for the House to acknowledge the 30-year anniversary of Waikato Tainui's raupatu settlement, with which only one party leader took issue. If we celebrated every single successful Treaty settlement, Peters argued, we'd be losing valuable time almost every day of the week. Labour MP Peeni Henare's unimpressed voice floated through the chamber: 'Wooooow ….' Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was first up on oral questions, and once the prime minister agreed that yes, he did stand by all of his government's statements, she went in for her kill: the funding, or lack thereof, for the government's increased KiwiSaver contributions, an alleged hole in Budget 2025 that the party has been quite happy to claim responsibility for discovering. Luxon shot down Swarbrick's claims the government had failed to budget for its own employer contributions to KiwiSaver, saying the bill would be footed through baselines. And the prime minister also didn't accept claptrap from Labour leader Chris Hipkins, nosily asking how many families had received the $250 Family Boost rebate promised last March. 'I don't have the numbers in front of me,' Luxon said, before being cut off by Labour's Willow-Jean Prime: 'Do you have them at all?' The minister for resources, Shane Jones, had spent the first 30 minutes of question time spurting his favourite slogans – 'mining!', 'fossil fuels!', 'heavy metal!' – at random, even when no one was talking about mining, fossil fuels or heavy metals. Finally, his NZ First colleague Tanya Unkovich offered him some patsies, so he could relish in the noble art of drilling a well into gas fields like those in Taranaki, and having the Crown take a 10-15% stake from these projects. 'Gas is short,' Jones started – 'not from you!' an opposition voice called – then 'talk is cheap'. The country's natural gas resources have been in decline, he declared, thanks to a 'foolish and dangerous … fateful decision of 2018 ' to ban oil exploration (Jones was indeed a minister for that Labour-led government at the time). Labour MP Kieran McAnulty, a star student of the school of standing orders, raised a point of order: that was clearly a political statement, he told the speaker, and shouldn't have been allowed. Well, I disagree with you, Gerry Brownlee replied – how could a government campaign against something and not be able to talk about it? Proving his respect for Brownlee's rulings and never-ending wish for unity among the parties, Jones began his next answer: 'Decisions riddled with woke ideology from the past government …' and the House erupted in laughter, clearly tired of such performative acclaim. Labour MP Duncan Webb was allowed to pose a question to a member of parliament rather than a minister, asking National backbencher and chair of the finance and expenditure committee Cameron Brewer why the submission window for the Regulatory Standards Bill was only open for four weeks, when the bill had a six-month reporting deadline. Parliament's left bloc has gone hard on campaigning against said bill, an Act Party classic hit, with claims that it's more controversial and damaging to Treaty obligations than the recently deceased Treaty principles bill. Mr Speaker, Brewer explained, the minister for regulation (aka Seymour) has already written to me to explain that he had 'misspoken' when the bill had its first reading on May 23. You may remember Seymour moved for the bill to be reported to the House on December 23, 'when he in fact meant to say September 23!' He'd take the minister at his word, Brewer said, as groans rippled through the House. So, Webb continued, would the committee chair bend to Seymour's demands, or follow the usual parliamentary process which asks that select committees be given six months to report back to the House? Brewer quoted former clerk David McGee's Parliamentary Practice: 'it is not uncommon for bills referred to select committee for four months to have a submissions period of four weeks'. Seymour, clearly tired of having his name and work thrown around with such indifference, rose for a point of order. When he failed to argue that there was no decision of the House to even be disregarded in this case, Seymour continued to argue with the speaker from his seat, annoying a voice on the opposition side: 'Just because you're deputy now!' Eventually, Brownlee was happy with Brewer's assertion that Seymour 'clearly misspoke', and McGee's guidance was enough to 'end the matter'. The faces of the opposition looked like they would be doing anything but, and maybe that's the trouble with taking Seymour at his word: nothing he says will ever be good enough for at least half of the entire 54th New Zealand parliament. Once question time had wrapped up, Seymour headed to Brewer's bench, perhaps passing along some further notes and corrections to misquotes. A tiny question time blip, a long weekend to celebrate his ascension to 2IC and now in the UK to take part in an Oxford Union debate on stolen land, the Act Party leader's cup still runneth over, even as his three water glasses remained untouched.
