Government to recruit truancy officers in Indigenous communities to improve school attendance

Updated

The Federal Government will recruit about 400 truancy officers to improve school attendance in remote Aboriginal communities.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion says $28 million will be spent targeting 40 remote communities across the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.

The program will cover more than 40 schools and there will be one school attendance officer employed for every 20 students.

Over the past five years the schools have had attendance rates below 70 per cent.

The Government hopes to attract Indigenous workers to the scheme, who will work directly with families to get children to school.

At a glance: Truancy program 400 truancy officers to be recruited

40 remote communities targeted

One truancy officer for every 20 students

Officers to work directly with families

Program to include home visits each day

Senator Scullion says the officers will go to homes each day to persuade children to go to school and to work out the reasons for their absenteeism.

"So it might not be a good reason but a resolvable reason - 'we missed the bus, we don't have any transport, he's really embarrassed because he doesn't have a uniform because the cat ate it or whatever' - the normal stuff of life," he said.

"There's so many barriers, but no one seems to bother to assist the family and the parents in knocking them down."

Scullion says standard varies depending on race

Senator Scullion says his own personal experience has shown the different standards set for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children.

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Minister Nigel Scullion speaks with ABC News 24 about the plan (ABC News)

"There's one standard for my kids and I can use the example of metropolitan Darwin; my kids, when they wag and played with other children, who are Aboriginal children, of course I got a pretty quick phone call and a pretty quick response," he said.

"But I note from my children that the kids that they were playing with didn't get the same sort of response."

He says the truancy officer system is an old model that works.

"It was certainly a model that I attended school with because if there hadn't of been school attendance officers in my day, I wouldn't have attended school and I wouldn't have got the education and the opportunities that I've had," he said.

Senator Scullion says there are punitive options available for dealing with the problem, but he does not think they will work.

"I don't have a lot of faith in them," he said.

"This is my personal view.

"I think we can move a whole range of kids that are not at school into school with not a great deal of effort and not going down that punitive path."

Onus on schools to also make changes

Chris Sarra knows all about attendance rates, as the chairman of the Stronger Smarter Institute which aims to reverse low expectations in Indigenous education.

He welcomes the Government's investment and is pleased the officers will be drawn from local community members.

"This can be a strategy that can work tremendously effectively and I say that as one who took real attendance from 62 to 94 per cent at Cherbourg and it was by employing local people," he said.

"The same can apply here: local people to be involved in the process but not in a sense where they just walk around hunting kids to school and chasing them to a school that's not worth turning up to."

Dr Sarra says students are more likely to skip school if they are not interested in it.

He says the school attendance officers will only make a real change if the schools engage their students.

"If they're executed in a way that is strength-based, not assuming that the problem lays entirely with the families or community," he said.

"The school has to change some things about what they do to make sure it's a school worth turning up to.

"It can make a difference. I'm optimistic and I think it could make a significant difference."

Topics: schools, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, federal-government, australia, nsw, qld, sa, wa, nt

First posted