Almost half of NZ students not attending school regularly
Ministry of Education data provided voluntarily by 2184 schools for Term 2 last year showed one in five children missed the last day of term and the lowest attendance was on Fridays and Mondays. Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin says it's not a good look and improvement must be made. "That Friday, that child might miss the connecting piece to the next piece of learning which puts them behind their peers - it's important," she told. "Every day that school is open, children should be at school - it's the message we send to children about how important their education is." Greenmeadows Intermediate School principal Cathy Chalmers says regular attendance has been declining at her Manurewa school for the last five years. Students can only miss four days of school a term to maintain regular attendance. "It's becoming more common for parents to take advantage of cheaper airfares to take holidays during term time," Ms Chalmers says. "If it's a long weekend we have a much higher number of students away on the Friday of the long weekend as parents take advantage to get away early."
Ms Chalmers says students who don't attend school regularly don't have the opportunity to have consistency in their learning, which is needed to maintain achievement levels. The data showed 58 per cent of students attended school regularly, compared to 64 per cent in 2018, and 70 per cent in 2015. "Three-quarters of justified absence cases were reportedly due to illness. Just over half of unjustified absence cases were recorded truancies or unable to be explained," a data summary from the Ministry of Education states. "Although regular attendance has declined across all demographics since 2015, the largest declines have been seen across year levels 1-8 and among Māori and Pacific students." All schools will be asked to record attendance data for the whole year to build a better understanding of the issue. In the meantime, the Government has announced a pilot programme for Kawerau and South Auckland, which sees groups of schools have control over how to deal with truancy in their areas, including the ability to hire local attendance officers. The decision to change from district attendance officers to contracted providers was made under the previous Government in 2013. Ms Chalmers says having the contracted organisation not based in the community was an issue, so she supports the new pilot structure.
"It just makes that direct link between schools and the families. It will help build relationships with those families," she says. "Schools will have ownership over the delivery of the attendance service, which perhaps currently we don't have as much as what we'd like to have." The pilot has started in Kawerau and will start in April in South Auckland, running through until December 2021. "This will allow time to collect good information. A full evaluation will be undertaken during 2021.
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Dry cleaners mt Roskill
Hello our fellow neighbors I was hoping someone would know where the old dry cleaners we had up at the lights on dominion road have moved to?? I was out of town and when I came back they were gone .... I had some items that I would really love to get back but if only I new where they moved to or how to get In Touch with the owners to see what they did with our clothes if they closed down or moved elsewhere? Any updates or news about it would be amazing neighbors. Have a great day
Poll: Should the government levy industries that contribute to financial hardship?
As reported in the Post, there’s a $30 million funding gap in financial mentoring. This has led to services closing and mentors stepping in unpaid just to keep helping people in need 🪙💰🪙
One proposed solution? Small levies on industries that profit from financial hardship — like banks, casinos, and similar companies.
So we want to hear what you think:
Should the government ask these industries to contribute?
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59.8% Yes, supporting people is important!
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25.9% No, individuals should take responsibility
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14.4% ... It is complicated
Even Australians get it - so why not Kiwis???
“Ten years ago, if a heatwave as intense as last week’s record-breaker had hit the east coast, Australia’s power supply may well have buckled. But this time, the system largely operated as we needed, despite some outages.
On Australia’s main grid last quarter, renewables and energy storage contributed more than 50% of supplied electricity for the first time, while wholesale power prices were more than 40% lower than a year earlier.
[…] shifting demand from gas and coal for power and petrol for cars is likely to deliver significantly lower energy bills for households.
Last quarter, wind generation was up almost 30%, grid solar 15% and grid-scale batteries almost tripled their output. Gas generation fell 27% to its lowest level for a quarter century, while coal fell 4.6% to its lowest quarterly level ever.
Gas has long been the most expensive way to produce power. Gas peaking plants tend to fire up only when supply struggles to meet demand and power prices soar. Less demand for gas has flowed through to lower wholesale prices.”
Full article: www.theguardian.com...
If even Australians see the benefit of solar - then why is NZ actively boycotting solar uptake? The increased line rental for electricity was done to make solar less competitive and prevent cost per kWh to rise even more than it did - and electricity costs are expected to rise even more. Especially as National favours gas - which is the most expensive form of generating electricity. Which in turn will accelerate Climate Change, as if New Zealand didn’t have enough problems with droughts, floods, slips, etc. already.
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