As a new school year starts, two Masterton schools have decided to take years of truancy issues into their own hands, hiring “attendance support people” to help get kids to class.
Lakeview School and Masterton Intermediate School [MIS] have joined forces to fund the programme, which Lakeview principal Tim Nelson said was “a local solution specifically designed for our schools’ needs.”
Laurence Titter of Wairarapa Youth Charitable Trust will be an “attendance support person” for both schools, helping remove barriers for students which prevent them from getting to school.
Veteran principal Frazer Mailman will collate the attendance data, compare it to previous years, report to the board of trustees, and, if the project is a success, apply it to the Ministry of Education [MoE] for funding.
Mailman was principal for 26 years, first at Masterton Primary and then at MIS, before he retired about 11 years ago. “I was shocked when I heard how bad school attendance had gotten, so I approached both schools, and we came up with the idea for this programme.
“This programme is about positive reinforcement, understanding the child’s interests, and seeing if they can be catered for in the school and getting them involved in some positive activity.
“I thought it would be a good fit for Laurence [Titter], given the work he does with kids at the Boxing Academy,” Mailman said.
Titter said his role would not be that of a traditional truancy officer.
“It’s not going to be like that; It will be a communication process, building that relationship with each young person and then making it more appealing for them to be at school.
“I was approached by three or four parents last night at the skate park with my kids, and they said, hey, we’ve heard that you’re working with Lakeview and MIS, and I said yes, and one asked if I could help with their kid because they were struggling to get that child out of bed and to school,” Titter said.
He said the role would be different for every student.
“It might be helping them get uniform or shoes or giving them a ride to school in the van.
“It’s about finding out what those mitigating factors are and see how we can help and put things in place and put them into their support networks to help them out,” Titter said.
MIS principal Russell Thompson said he was confident the programme would make a noticable improvement in attendance.
“This has been an ongoing issue, and we feel hopeful that this will encourage students to be at school so they can learn and be involved in extra-curricular activities,” Thompson said.
Lakeview Principal Tim Nelson said Mailman and Titter were the perfect people to run the programme.
“You’ve got one person, probably the most experienced principal in Wairarapa, and another has a real affinity with our community, and they have developed the program together.
The trial project is funded by the boards of trustees for both schools rather than MoE.
“This is my 26th year in education, and I’ve never seen a program that is this tailored towards a school’s needs.
“We’ve worked together to come up with what will work specifically for our schools, as opposed to being given a cookie-cutter model by the Ministry or by the government saying do that in your school,” Nelson said.
MoE spokesperson Nancy Bell said the ministry was aware of the attendance initiative and support both schools.
“We are also happy to consider a future funding application.
“There is also some preliminary inter-agency work between MoE and the Ministry of Social Development in Wairarapa to explore other avenues of practical support for schools in the area of attendance,” Bell said.
