E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SUBJECTS: School attendance in the Northern Territory

MICHAEL ROWLAND: More Aboriginal communities could soon have their family welfare payments linked to school attendance.  The Federal Government will introduce legislation next week to extend an intervention program aimed at rating high rates of truancy to more than twenty Aboriginal communities.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Now, the Minister for School Education, Peter Garrett, says the expansion of the program, which is known as SEAM – S-E-A-M – follows consultation with Aboriginal communities and he joins us now from Canberra, Peter Garrett, good morning.  Thanks for joining us.

PETER GARRETT: Hi, Virginia.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: What evidence do we have so far that the threat of linking welfare payments to school attendance actually works?

PETER GARRETT: In the SEAM trials, Virginia, we saw spikes of increased activity and compliance when it was put in place and what we want to do is make sure that in this particular instance, by gathering the family and the school and social workers together for a family conference, we actually put specific and very direct influence on the parents to make sure that they understand how important it is that their kids actually do attend school.

So the trial shows that there is a spike of activity once SEAM is instituted.  What we’re really saying here is that given the amount of investment that we’ve put into schools, additional investment in the NT, attendance is clearly standing out as an absolutely urgent and critical measure and we believe that this will make a difference.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: In most states, of course, there are laws in place already requiring parents to send their kids to school with stiff penalties if they don’t.  Are you satisfied that local authorities are already doing enough to enforce those laws without the new imposition?

 PETER GARRETT: Well, one of the important things about our announcement today is that we’re effectively aligning this particular initiative with the Northern Territory’s Every Child Every Day policy and we’re working together with the NT Government.  Yes, there is the provision in the NT legislation for parents to be fined, but I think the key thing here and I know it’s challenging, is that we’ve got such low attendance rates across the NT on average.

We’ve got some schools where we’ve got attendance rates below forty per cent.  If your attendance is below sixty per cent, kids are effectively missing two days of school.  So what we really want to do is provide an opportunity for the principal, the school, social workers and the family to agree an attendance plan and having agreed that attendance plan, that it’s monitored so that we can really direct additional focus on getting those kids to school and that will tie in with what the Northern Territory’s doing right across the Territory.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: But how do you take account of the mobility of people?  In many communities there, of course, you know, they’re going off in search of, there’s court appearances, there’s legal matters, there’s sorry business and the like.  When kids are taken with those parents when they are moving around, how do you make sure that you’re not punishing the wrong people?

PETER GARRETT: Well, I think the point about this proposal is the attendance plan itself and the agreement with the parents and the school and the pupils, that this is what’s going to happen.  And yes, you’re right, it is a more mobile population in the Top End and, of course, if there are special circumstances that apply to a kid not being able to go to school, then that can be taken into account.

But critically, given the fact that we’ve spent nearly half a billion dollars – we’ve provided extra housing, we’ve provided an extra two hundred teachers to the NT Government.  We've provided significant investment through building the education revolution.  We’re about – we’re nearly half a billion dollars into extra investment in education and yet we’re still seeing these very high non-attendance rates, particularly in some areas.

We think it’s necessary to do this.  We recognise that parents have an expectation that all parents in the NT will make sure that their kids go to school and we know that it’s going to make the job of teachers that much easier if they don’t have to run around, chase up kids like they sometimes do, or constantly have to deal with kids who are chronic non-attenders.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: But again, just to return to that point of punishing the right people, if it’s the parents, the families, who end up without those welfare payments and you haven’t got the community to back the move, as you do say in places like Hermannsburg where they go a step further and they round up the kids not at school, they collect the names of kids not at school and, you know, post them in the store and the like, if you don’t have that kind of community involvement, you’re just running the risk of in the end punishing those kids because the parents are going to be short.

PETER GARRETT: Well, I think the key thing here is that the NT Future’s consultation did show that over half the people consulted believed that schools were much better than they’d been previously and recognise that everybody needs to put in to an effort in terms of getting their kids to school.

And as you would know, in many communities, there are already programs and activities amongst the school community and this is really only dealing with a relatively small number of cases but the attendance levels themselves, or non-attendance levels, are so high we think it’s a necessary step to do and because it actually aligns the enrolment and attendance measure with the Northern Territory Every Child Every Day measure and because the centrepiece of it really is the family conference and agreeing the attendance plan, we think it’ll provide that additional focus and impetus that some of these families need to get their kids to school.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: And, Peter Garrett, the criticism that’s levelled at this particular program, while the intervention in general, but also this particular part of the program, is that it’s discriminatory, that it’s focused on indigenous communities and doesn’t travel across the white population.  What’s your response to that?

PETER GARRETT:  Well, it does apply to all communities but in the NT we’ve got large proportions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and they clearly will be one of the focuses.  But, look, I’ve spent quite a bit of time travelling, particularly into the Northern Territory, over the last couple of months.  I’ve spent time sitting down with communities and really trying to see what additional steps we need to have in place to make sure that we don’t have a generation of kids who don’t come through school with anything approaching a reasonable education, who’ve completely limited their opportunities for work in the future and building livelihoods for themselves.

And I find that there is generally pretty strong support for us having measures in place to focus on that small number of parents where the kids just aren’t coming to school to make sure that they can.  And, you know, if a kid misses two days of school a week, then after a year, they’re a couple of years behind, we just can’t afford to have that happen to another generation of kids in the NT.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Peter Garrett, good to talk to you this morning.  Thanks so much.

PETER GARRETT: Thanks, Virginia. 

ENDS