Parents must face responsibility for truancy and youth offending
Parents will face stronger consequences for their children’s truancy and offending under ACT’s youth justice policy.
“School attendance is key to educational achievement and ultimately peaceful and productive lives,” says ACT Leader
David Seymour. “Truancy, however, has been linked by police to increasingly serious and violent crimes.
“On an average day, 34,000 children are absent without justification. That’s a truancy rate of 4.5%. Truancy rates are
even higher at low-decile schools.
“It is parents’ responsibility to ensure their children are attending school. Too many parents are failing in this
responsibility.
“ACT would require compulsory parenting classes for parents of persistently truant students.
“ACT would increase the fine for parents of truant children from $15 a day to $50 a day, and increase the maximum fine
from $150 to $500. And these fines will actually be enforced because they’ll be collected by the IRD instead of the school.
“And because truancy is strongly linked to poverty, we can target it through the welfare system. If a persistently
truant child’s parents are receiving a benefit, ACT will put those parents on income management until the child maintains a clean attendance record for two school terms.
“In other words, that family’s benefit payments will go directly from MSD toward essentials like bills and groceries
before leftovers are paid to parents in cash. This ensures benefit payments are used to secure the child’s wellbeing,
and provides an extra incentive for parents to enforce attendance.
“ACT would also introduce income management and compulsory parenting classes for parents of children convicted of repeat
offences.
“Parents and Legal guardians have the primary responsibility for ensuring their kids are in school and not out on the
streets committing petty crime. If they fail to teach kids right from wrong, then the government needs to step-in to
break the cycle of crime in our neighbourhoods; and that means consequences for the parents of these kids too.”
ENDS