School Absenteeism

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:29): My question is to the Minister for Education. What guidelines are used to proceed to prosecution of school absenteeism cases? How many cases are currently pending, and what policies are implemented to assist the children during these processes?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:29): I will search out the detailed documents and provide them to the member for Florey for her information. There are currently no further prosecutions before the courts. We have had two—the first one being the first successful prosecution in 24 years—and we have no others at present.

The question about the support for the children is an important one because this is in fact all about the children. What is absolutely essential is that their successful engagement with school is the outcome of any action we take, whether it be through the legal mechanism or whether it be through the far more common mechanism for attempting to deal with chronic absenteeism, which is engagement through the attendance officers, through the child wellbeing practitioners and through the school activities and supports themselves. So, a range of supports are offered.

One which is I believe at play in at least one of the instances that we have been discussing is the use of the FLO program for engagement. The FLO program is a means that has been used by our education system for some time to engage students who otherwise are unwilling or unable to engage in mainstream schooling in a way that will keep them connected to the school but will also be concentrating on developing their skills and their attitude towards being able to feel that school is something useful for them. Members may be aware that there was a review of the FLO program undertaken relatively recently. We are on a journey, as they say, from a highly successful program for keeping kids at school to translating that better into having kids complete school with their SACE.

But what is crucial is that whatever support is required—whether it be counselling; whether it be student support officer work; whether it be an alternative means of offering the education, which is the FLO program; whether it be engagement through the attendance officers, in some cases with Aboriginal education workers; or whether it be the engagement of the child wellbeing practitioners—all the mechanisms that we have at our disposal are used to help assist kids in danger of not attending school more or less permanently and helping them come back, be part of the school community and get what is absolutely important to all of them, which is a decent education.

The SPEAKER: A supplementary, member for Florey.