School Absenteeism

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (14:33): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. How is the Department for Education capturing data on truancy or chronic absenteeism in our schools, and how many chronically truant children do we have in our public school system?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:34): As the member is aware, that data is collected at a school level and managed primarily at a school level, unless the school requests assistance from central office largely in the form of whether or not a prosecution might be prepared. As members may be aware, we have now filed our first prosecution in a number of years, and there are another two cases that we are considering. I will be bringing out into the public for consultation before the end of the year a piece of legislation that will also address chronic absenteeism.

I would like to point out that, as any member who has heard me on the radio will know, I think the absence of prosecutions is a problem for managing chronic truancy because it implies that it is impossible to have a prosecution. In part, we will test that through the cases that are currently under consideration and the one that is already in the court system. We will be able to respond with legislative changes, as I said, with the draft that will be out later this year.

It is also important to bear in mind that there are many ways to deal with chronic truancy. Prosecution is but one and one that will be useful probably only in rare circumstances. In a large part, what is required, and what the department has been doing assiduously in the last several years, is beefing up its capacity to work with families. As we know, truancy is usually an indicator of other things going wrong in the family. Not only does that then lead to child protection considerations explicitly by Families SA but also for the schools.

The work done through the attendance officers and the Aboriginal education workers has been useful and has seen an increase in attendance across the state. Also, some of the 60 wellbeing practitioners have started, and the remainder start at the beginning of term 4. They will be able to work with families in a way that is more productive and considered than has been able to be done to date. We have seen already some good impacts with that kind of work. We will see still more once we have the wellbeing practitioners fully operational.

I expect that the majority of children in the situation of being chronically absent will be able to be addressed through that mechanism. As members are aware, I want to have the clear capacity to prosecute where necessary. I anticipate that the draft bill will also include the capacity for the department to require family care meetings on the basis of chronic absenteeism and also that the department would be able to issue expiation notices in order to push parents along.

There are a number of different responses, bearing in mind that it is fewer than 3 per cent on any given day who are absent without explanation and likely much fewer than that who are chronically absent. We have been improving the measures of attendance across the schools because it is important information for the schools. It is also important at a systemic level to understand not only where there is chronic truancy that probably is an indicator of problems in the family but also casual absence, where parents are not sufficiently valuing kids getting to school every single day.

We do need to make sure that we are consistently sending out the message that every single day of school makes a difference to a kid. There should be no excuses and no, 'Just take a break; it doesn't matter, you can take some time off.' School matters, and we need to be really consistent in that message.