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Mike's Minute: Truancy has been an issue for years, not just in an election year
Eagle-eared listeners might have picked up yesterday the non-answer from Chris Hipkins over truancy.
Yes, an announcement is coming this week, maybe even today, and it’s the return of the truancy officer. Not that we want to call them that, they'll be called something woke.
But what he wouldn’t answer was the very simple question - why now?
He seems to have discovered since becoming our nation's leader that kids aren't going to school.
Or is it that he has discovered since becoming Prime Minister that making an announcement about truancy officers might be smart politics?
The point being, and the bit he wouldn’t answer, was none of this is new. He tried to offer Covid as an excuse and it sort of is, but only sort of.
Kids haven't been going to school now for years because we have created an environment where it doesn’t matter.
The good schools pull their hair out and spend far too much time and resource chasing kids. And for every minute they spend doing that they are distracted from teaching the kids who do turn up.
There is a malaise in this country that permeates most aspects of life now and school is just one part. It's laziness, it’s a culture of excuse making be it Covid, cost of living crisis or the weather.
If we can close it down, stay in bed or put it off we are in like a robber's dog. It’s a very sad state of affairs.
Our education system, as measured by the testing around numeracy and literacy, is appalling. It's embarrassingly appalling and it's hard to learn if you aren't at school.
The fact that crime has been allowed to grow under Hipkins' watch, is yet another reminder of the farcical charade the Government are trying to create around his arrival.
Most of the crimes, whether economic or social, have been committed in the past five years by him being a senior member of the Jacinda Ardern clique or by him directly as minister.
He was Minister of Education; the truancy crisis was overseen by him.
It grew under him, he watched it and did nothing and now, magically, come election year an answer he had at his fingertips all along can somehow be produced.
It's like the policy dumpster fire last week. It's decent politics and it steals another opposition idea.
But the cynicism that drives it is sickening.
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