News reports emerged over the weekend detailing new figures which reveal thousands of NSW parents are facing significant penalties after their children missed school, with fines said to reach as much as $11,000.
Speaking on Nine breakfast TV show Today, curriculum expert Dr Ben Jensen, CEO of Learning First, said school absenteeism was an area where the government ‘really struggles’ to make an impact.
“Obviously the data shows it’s growing, and I think it’s important to realise behind all of this is that for a small group of students, but a growing group of students, who are often low performing in terms of their academic progress, increased rates of absenteeism or truancy has an incredibly negative effect … on their outcomes, not just in education, but lifelong outcomes.
“And the government is really just trying to find ways to actually address that…” he noted.
Jensen said we don’t know if these ‘blunt instrument’ measures will actually work to improve the problem.
“…we’ve just really struggled in a number of areas to try and get this right. It has a huge impact on [children’s] education, and teachers know this, school principals know this, they have been struggling with this for decades.
“It’s got much worse post-COVID, and we see an area where, to be honest, government struggles to actually impact what happens in the home, the decisions people make, and so it’s often this blunt instrument that comes in over the top.”
School Can’t Australia, the leading support group for parents whose children are experiencing school refusal – or ‘school can’t’ as the group prefer to call it – has warned punitive, ‘carrot and stick’ measures do not help affected children to make it through the school gate.
Fines for parents, school attendance awards and threats of legal action all presume that the problem is a lack of motivation to attend or to send a child to school, the group maintains.
Tiffany Westphal, director of School Can’t Australia, said accounts from impacted families tell a very different story.
“Many parents share stories of children with unmet disability support needs, experiencing chronic stress at school, leading to burnout or trauma.
“Others share stories of students being bullied and experiencing threats to physical and psychological safety at school and online. Many share stories of stressed teachers who are not resourced with time, information or knowledge to respond in helpful ways.
Parents share stories, Westphal said, of lengthy waits for professional assistance only to find that the help was unhelpful.
“Consistently they share stories of an education system in need of reform and not resourced to meet the needs of their child,” she said.
Westphal pointed to research which shows punitive approaches to managing chronic school non-attendance have either limited impact or weak evidence to support their use.
Yet commenting on the Australian teachers Reddit page, one educator from a ‘mid-low’ SES public school backed the approach taken by authorities.
“…There are parents for whom this is the only kind of thing that will actually get them to be responsible. Our society is too permissive. School is not negotiable and low level anxiety/depression are not helped by avoidance of it,” they argued.
Another offered a different take:
“A huge part of this is cultural in Australia. I’ve seen many parents treat education as negotiable, and things like having the day off for your birthday or going on holiday mid-term because it’s cheaper are completely socially acceptable.
“I’ve also worked with many school refusers and we can spend the money on interventions and support and programs but what it often comes down to is a parent who needs to out-stubborn their children on the matter.
“The ones I’ve seen come back to school successfully are the ones with the parent who will drag them kicking and screaming in wearing their embarrassing pyjamas (with a uniform to change into) and leave them with us to be regulated and settled. We usually have to do that a couple times, then they settle and re-integrate.
“Does it suck? Yes. Is it intense and hard on parent, child, and professional? Yes. Does it work? Better than any other way to throw money at the problem. Children need to understand that school is not negotiable and that there are people at school who can keep them supported and safe,” they contended.
Although many education systems use punitive or compliance-based measures like fines to tackle SAP, a new OECD report states, these approaches may produce short-term effects but “are unlikely to durably reduce absence on their own”.
An OECD report released this year asserts that no single policy measure is sufficient to address school attendance problems (SAP) and warned against heavy-handed responses.
“Responses need to be cross-sectoral, with alignment across governance, resourcing, capacity building, school-level interventions, and monitoring and evaluation.
“Moreover, SAP are often concentrated among students facing disadvantage and structural barriers. Policies that address these underlying conditions through targeted supports and inclusive approaches can help improve attendance, while rigid or enforcement-heavy responses may risk reinforcing inequities if not carefully designed.”
It flagged that although many education systems use punitive or compliance-based measures like fines to tackle the issue, these approaches may produce short-term effects but “are unlikely to durably reduce absence on their own”.
Teachers and school staff play an important role in shaping attendance through classroom practices, relationships and engagement, it added.
“Effective responses rely on a combination of instructional adaptations, targeted supports engagement and re-integration measures…”
School Can’t Australia also note an AERO Rapid Literature review from last year which found only two studies investigating the impact of punitive legal approaches on school attendance with weak evidence supporting their effectiveness.
“The reality is, if parents and carers had the power to resolve the things standing in the way of their child attending school then they would have already done it.
“The reality is, threats of fines and court action result in increased distress and poorer mental health outcomes for both parent carers and their children,” the group maintained.
Furthermore, threats of fines and legal action ultimately force families to seek refuge outside of mainstream education and boost homeschooling numbers, School Can’t Australia argued.
“This inadvertently improves attendance rates in mainstream schools, because all the students experiencing difficulties attending school, have exited mainstream education.
“This reduces pressure on the system to change and transfers the burden of managing the fallout to parent/carers.”
The group is calling on governments to provide cross-sector wraparound supports for affected families and to improve data collection to ensure a clearer understanding of who exactly is experiencing ‘school can’t’.
“Carrots and sticks do not address the underlying reasons that students struggle to attend school, they simply ask parents and children to try harder to solve problems they don’t necessarily have the capacity to solve themselves,” Westphal concluded.
Jensen said the fines and court action approach places blame squarely on parents.
“These kids are not at school, and there is a very large growing sector where parents are really struggling, and I think it’s also worth calling out.
“This is part of the reason why, and I think we’ve got to be careful with this, there’s an increasing number of families and of students moving away from schools altogether.
“Homeschooling in Australia has doubled in the last five years, so we are seeing this is not just a small issue, this is a rapidly growing issue, and I don’t think anyone has found the answer for that at all.”
