As the Government plans to crack down on the 30,000 pupils wagging school nationwide each day, a proactive approach and strong relationships have been credited with keeping truancy levels low in Otago.
Education Minister Anne Tolley outlined plans yesterday to help schools combat truancy after a Ministry of Education survey revealed more than 30,000 pupils were truant from state and state-integrated schools on any given day.
The survey, carried out last July, involved truancy data from 653 primary and secondary schools across New Zealand.
The national average total absence rate was 11.6%, up from 11.5% in 2006.
Unjustified absences averaged 4.2%, compared with 4.1% in 2004.
Gisborne had the highest total and unjustified absence rates at 14.9% and 7.9% respectively.
Otago, on the other hand, had the lowest total absence rate, 8.3% and the third lowest unjustified absence rate, 2.7%.
To help combat this, the amount of funding available was doubled to $8 million, Mrs Tolley said.
The funding would initially go towards allowing more schools to use electronic attendance registers; encouraging more schools to implement an early notification system which sends a text message to parents whose children were away from school without explanation; and a one-off funding of $1.5 million to reduce the time it took to get non-enrolled pupils back into school.
An amount was also set aside to help schools prosecute parents of children who were "persistently truant".
Otago Youth Wellness Trust manager Barbara Payton agreed with the government's stance because truancy was a "real issue".
However, she believed it was "too simplistic" to suggest prosecuting parents or making school more interesting were "the silver bullet".
"There is a responsibility with the parents, caregivers, state and schools to ensure kids are engaged and attending.
"That's done pretty well here."
The trust had held the truancy contract in Dunedin for about 10 years and Mrs Payton believed it took a different approach to other centres.
Strong relationships had been formed with schools and contact was made early about any pupils where truancy was an issue.
