Truancy crackdown

Truancy crackdown: St Leonards Rd Primary School pupil Michelle Chen, 10, with principal Darren Smith and one of the new passes that authorities hope will help keep kids in class. Photo: BEN WATSON

By LEANNE WARR

Skipping school today?

Think again.

Your chances of getting caught are a lot greater after the launch of a city-wide plan to crack down on truancy.

Instantly recognisable leave slips are being handed out to students with legitimate reasons to be absent.

But anyone caught out of class without a slip will be frogmarched back to school.

Waitakere Area Principals Association chairman Darren Smith is thrilled with the new scheme, which is being supported by police, government and community agencies, and shopping centres.

"It's helping get kids back into school," he says.

About 4 percent of students in Waitakere city are truants and Mr Smith says schools are taking a zero-tolerance approach to the problem.

"It's to ensure all of our children are involved in education," he says.

Senior constable Richie Williams says the plan is a great idea that will make it more difficult for students to be truants.

He says truancy affects the wider community.

"The less educated our young people are the less well they will do in society," he says.

Mr Williams says a number of schools in west Auckland have run similar programmes but not in collaboration with everyone else.

"As far as I am aware this is the first time a whole district has done it as a combined initiative," he says.

"One of its strengths is that it's in a new form with a proper official document so everybody will recognise the same one."

Senior sergeant Dave Orr says most truants are dealt with by their schools.

But he says parents found to be responsible for the continued absence of their children can be charged under the Education Act 1989.

The act allows parents to be fined $15 for every missed school day up to a maximum of $150 for a first-time offender and $400 for those with a history of truancy.

Police say prosecution is a last resort.