Opinion: How can we get kids to school in post-Covid environment?

The green-yellow-red system will presumably be based on term-by-term attendance and will signal when students’ attendance rates fall below the desired level of 90%. In particular, it’s proposed that the names of the red-alert students will be forwarded to the Ministry of Education for follow-up action as yet to be determined.

This conversation is taking place alongside the suggestion of fines for parents of students whose attendance doesn’t match the standard, and proposed cuts to staffing levels in the public service.

One wonders what resources will be made available, if any, to the MoE to follow up on attendance concerns? We also have to wonder about fining parents who may already be struggling; will this not simply impoverish households that can least afford it? And will it create a benign view of the school concerned?

The issue of changed attendance rates in the post-Covid environment is not unique to New Zealand. On March 29, 2024, The New York Times published an article, “The Crisis of School Absences” which explored the rates of absenteeism in the US.

The article suggests what has happened, because of the lockdowns during the Covid period, is that students’ relationships with schools have been broken. Schools, or “school”, once seen as the answer to all our questions, has become an option. If students can be authorised to stay at home for extended periods as part of an official plan, like avoiding Covid, why not stay at home all the time?

So, if some students who have enjoyed their extended liberty are proving hard to lure back, how might we manage their return? What can schools offer that a stay-at-home education can’t?

Rebuilding quality relationships with students, gradually and over time, would be my suggestion. Schools, classes and playgrounds are about relationships; building strong connections with, and between, students has obvious benefits socially, but is also true of academic performance as well.

Schools have to be seen to be offering something five days a week that they can’t get at home. Teens might say their relationship needs are filled by social media, but just as emergency remote learning was a poor replacement for face-to-face learning in the view of many of my colleagues in schools, so social media platforms are a very poor facsimile of their face-to-face equivalent.

Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory of Motivation holds that people are better motivated when they experience three things: autonomy, relatedness and competence.