Category Archives: NZ Media

Parents convicted over son’s truancy

Posted on by

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4777135a11.html

Parents convicted over son’s truancy

By NICOLA BRENNAN – Waikato Times | Saturday, 29 November 2008

The parents of a Morrinsville College student have been prosecuted and convicted over their son’s truancy.

Kathleen Kereopa and Chris Hemara, charged under the Education Act, pleaded guilty when they appeared in the Morrinsville District Court last week for the repeat non-attendance of their 15-year-old son.

They were both convicted and discharged.

Matamata couple Belinda Witaka and Jason Aoake faced a similar charge on the same day and were convicted and discharged, but ordered to pay $130 in court costs.

Morrinsville College deputy principal Marian Fogarty welcomed the convictions, and the message they sent.

“The available penalties are fines and so it is probably more important that the parents are given a clear message that if their children truant they can be prosecuted. I am sure if the same parents were convicted again there would be a substantial financial penalty.”

A second offence carries a fine of $400.

Ms Fogarty said the college took the issue of truancy “very seriously” and monitored their students’ attendance closely.

“We have prosecuted a family once before, a number of years ago and we will certainly contemplate doing it again.

“But it is a last resort and obviously we would much rather not have to take this step.”

The parents in this case were reported to the police by the town’s ROCKON (Reduce Our Community Kids Offending Now) committee.

The attendance rate for the first three terms of this year was 63 per cent – the goal for secondary students is 92 per cent. A 60 per cent attendance rate is 76 days off a year.

ROCKON meets once a month and is made up of representatives of schools, Child Youth and Family (CYF), the police, Education Ministry and health providers. If an absentee problem arises, the first step is for the police to contact the parents. If things do not improve CYF is called in to set up a family group conference.

If all those interventions failed the next step was to prosecute the parents.

Ms Fogarty said truancy was an issue at every school – Morrinsville College was “no better or worse than others”. Year 10 students most often skipped school, although there were a small number of persistent truants at each level.

The college belonged to the Morrinsville District Truancy Service which employed two attendance officers to help track students and get them back to school. But she said funding had not increased in 11 years, and the service was struggling.

“It should be a government priority to fund all truancy services adequately and ensure that everything possible is done to keep students at school and off the streets. “

Armed robbery for lunch spurs concerns over school violence

Posted on by

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10545396

4:00AM Friday Nov 28, 2008

A 14-year-old schoolgirl who held a knife to the throat of a younger girl while demanding her lunch has heightened concern over the level of violence some Gisborne schools are having to deal with.

The incident came just days after a fight was filmed at another school and posted on a video website.

A small group of Gisborne Girls’ High School students approached another group of 13- to 14-year-old girls on the school field during lunch break last Wednesday.

Police said an altercation took place and a knife was used in a threatening manner.

The Gisborne Herald said it had been told a 13-year-old student was asked for her lunch, she refused, and her hair was grabbed and a knife held to her throat.

Details of the altercation remain unclear and investigations are continuing.

A parent of one of the girls approached said her daughter was shaken but “coping” and had returned to school.

“All of the parents, on both sides of the fence, are extremely upset at what has happened,” she said. “A knife at a high school is something you don’t want to see.”

She did not hold the school responsible.

“Something like this is out of their control. It’s not something you expect in a Gisborne high school,” she said.

The school’s board of trustees held a suspension meeting on Monday night to deal with three students.

Board chairman Ian Petty said one of the girls had since been excluded from the school, while the two others were on extended suspension pending further investigation by the school’s senior management team and police.

Exclusion applies to students under 16 years old and means the school needs to help them find another form of education.

Girls’ High principal Heather Gorrie said the situation affected a lot of people and it was important to allow due process to take its course effectively.

The school was understood to be supporting the victims.

The incident followed a fight at Gisborne Boys’ High School that was filmed and posted on a video internet site the previous week.

Principal Greg Mackle said a group of boys “wanting to set up a fight club” brought boxing gloves to school and began fighting during an interval period. It is understood camera-phones were used to film the footage.

The incident was stopped by school staff “straight away”.

Mr Mackle felt these fights were “mock-ups”. He was more concerned with the measures they might need to take to ensure general school safety.

His “real worry” was what they were going to do if situations such as the knife incident happened again.

“Put kids through metal detectors? It’s a real concern,” he said.

“We do what we can in terms of what we see and hear, but we do a hell of a lot in promoting the non-violent stuff as well.’

Mr Mackle sympathised with staff at Gisborne Girls’ High, saying he knew how hard they had worked to make their school safe.

“There is no way a school would tolerate that sort of violence. There’s no way a school would turn a blind eye.”

– NZPA

$1.5m paid to control kids

Posted on by

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4764141a11.html

$1.5m paid to control kids

By LANE NICHOLS – The Dominion Post | Tuesday, 18 November 2008

A fund to help schools with troublesome pupils has dished out more than 1300 payments – mostly for dealing with violence and aggressive or threatening behaviour.

The Interim Response Fund was set up to help schools keep difficult pupils in class. In most cases the money is spent employing one-on-one teacher aides to work with difficult or dangerous pupils.

The fund, introduced last year, is part of a strategy to tackle “severe behaviour” after a sharp rise in incidents.

“It might be some sort of unprovoked assault,” Secondary Principals Association president Peter Gall said.

“That’s the worst sort of violence. That’s unfortunately the situation schools are faced with on an increasing basis these days.”

An Education Ministry report issued to The Dominion Post shows the fund has paid out more than $1.5 million on 1387 successful applications to support 1240 pupils.

Almost every crisis involved boys, most of whom were still at primary school. Injury had been caused in 41 per cent of cases.

A further 20 per cent involved other violent incidents, and 11 per cent involved aggressive or threatening behaviour.

After 10 weeks, nearly one in three schools said the situation was still unstable.

Asked how widespread violence problems were in schools, Special Education deputy secretary Nicholas Pole said the level of violence committed by youth offenders was growing – though the ministry did not “collect data on it in any systematic way”.

Some schools have started using a new confidential pupil survey to gauge whether pupils feel safe, how often they play truant and whether they get bored in class.

The ministry hopes the surveys will provide important information, but has ruled out making the use of them compulsory.

Council for Educational Research manager Charles Darr helped develop the Me and My School survey. He said it was being used by about 100 schools.

It asked pupils how engaged they felt at school, including their safety, truancy patterns, teacher relationships and how interesting they found classes.

“Schools are using it to get some sort of student voice on how well students feel they are involved in student life,” Mr Darr said.

“If you’re looking at the health of your school, you need to be looking at something like this as much as you do achievement information.”

Teachers fight to save Shakespeare

Posted on by

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4761441a11.html

Teachers fight to save Shakespeare

By LANE NICHOLS – The Dominion Post | Saturday, 15 November 2008

Shakespeare’s plays and other great works of literature considered too difficult for some pupils will disappear from classrooms under proposed changes to the curriculum, alarmed principals say.

There are also fears that basic content in maths, history and business studies will be axed in a drive to make subjects easier, “dumbing down” schoolchildren and further undermining NCEA.

Education officials are reviewing the way secondary-school subjects are assessed in preparation for the new curriculum, to be introduced from 2010.

English teachers say some papers, such as level 3 Shakespeare, could disappear. They will discuss their concerns at a meeting in Wellington next week.

The Qualifications Authority says the world’s greatest playwright is not compulsory but stresses that the bard’s works will still be taught in most schools.

Macleans College principal Byron Bentley said reference to basic content, such as Shakespeare, appeared to have been axed under the proposals.

It meant some schools would ignore important subject material if pupils found it too hard – offering lightweight courses that deprived pupils of key knowledge.

Mr Bentley, who heads the lobby group Education Forum, said other subjects such as history had no proposed syllabus, leaving content decisions entirely to individual teachers. There was also a drive for more internal assessment at the expense of nationally administered exams. He said the changes were being bulldozed through by officials, and he called for a government moratorium.

Lower Hutt’s Sacred Heart College principal, Lisl Prendergast, feared changes that could sideline Shakespeare were already a fait accompli.

Other concerns raised include:

The study of blogs earning the same credits as literature papers

The elimination of essays in some subjects

No mention of accounting or business studies in the curriculum

“All the challenge and in-depth analysis and skills required at each level are being modified, and in my opinion, made easier,” a senior teacher said. “Is the implication that we should not dare to challenge students, or heaven forbid, ask them to engage with texts that really speak to the human condition in a superbly crafted form? Dumbing down again.”

Education Ministry curriculum group manager Mary Chamberlain said knowledge in key subjects remained important as ever, but it was no longer good enough to have pupils faithfully reproducing content.

They needed to apply their knowledge to problem-solving in the real world.

Ministry officials and national subject associations were reviewing all NCEA subject areas to ensure standards were rigorous and that pupils continued achieving well internationally, she said. Consultation was now under way.

“Schools have the professional responsibility for designing learning programmes which contain appropriate knowledge that are relevant for their particular students.

“A teacher may choose to teach students to respond critically to a Shakespearean drama, or another piece of drama depending on which is most relevant for students.”

Schools Failing To Tackle Violence

Posted on by

MEDIA RELEASE
13 November 2008

Schools Failing To Tackle Violence

Family First NZ says that schools are being forced to turn a ‘blind eye’ to increasingly unacceptable behaviour and violence because of a drive by the Ministry of Education to reduce the numbers of suspensions and expulsions.

The comments follow a Close Up programme which highlighted a vicious and unprovoked attack and yet the offender is still at the school and the victim (and family) is still being victimised by the inappropriate response of the school.

“It seems ironic that as we are saying no to violence within families and our community, schools are tolerating an unacceptable level of violence, sexual and offensive behaviour and intimidation,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

A Ministry of Education report earlier this year trumpeted a fall in school suspensions, and at the time Minister of Education Chris Carter heralded it as a ‘concerted effort by schools supported by the ministry’.

“Yet Education Ministry figures in 2007 revealed that violence and dangerous behaviour is on the rise in schools with more pupils assaulting teachers and classmates, and the Post Primary Teachers Association called for more resources to deal with difficult pupils and for zero tolerance toward violence and abuse,” says Mr McCoskrie.

Ironically, Family First uncovered figures which the Ministry had buried showing a 37 per cent surge in primary school disciplinary actions. Primary schools are reporting increasingly violent misbehaviour by children as young as five.

The presidents of the Canterbury and national principals’ associations backed up recent comments by a high school principal who said “Because it’s an election year, the Government is trying to make sure the statistics look really good.”

“The Ministry of Education is burying both its head and the extent of the problem in the sand, and both staff and young people are being put at risk by the unacceptable behaviour of a minority who know that the consequences are negligible,” says Mr McCoskrie.

ENDS
For More Information and Media Interviews, contact Family First:
Bob McCoskrie – National Director
Mob. 027 55 555 42