More than 30,000 students are truant from state and state-integrated schools on any given day, an Education Ministry truancy survey shows.

National is determined to get tough on truancy, and we have doubled the funding to tackle the problem. An additional $4 million a year will help schools introduce stronger and more proactive measures to reduce truancy.

Among the initiatives that we are extending are electronic attendance registers, enabling schools to quickly identify casual truants before they become regular truants; text messaging parents whose children are missing from school without explanation; reducing the time it takes to get non-enrolled students back into school; and helping schools prosecute parents of persistent truants.

Work will continue on our long-term approach, aimed at keeping more children engaged at school, rather than having to get truants back into the system.

More information:

http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/getting+tough+truancy

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