You Must Be From Away

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I tend to get a bit hot under the collar when I read headlines like this, having friends who are school teachers and who are expected by parents to teach their kids how to brush their teeth.

(I kid you not)

So the first reaction to this is to say(bellow…?) “Well, HANG ON A MINUTE. They’re YOUR kids. YOU make sure they go to school.”

Then you read that one mother is bringing her kid up up on her own, has a full-time job and has been trying to get the education authorities to help her.

OBVIOUSLY gets pushed from one department to the next.

OBVIOUSLY no-one is interested in taking on a tough case.

It surprises me that they didn’t suggest that she went on welfare to have more time to look after the kids….

Read the story

The boys, aged 14 and 15, were each charged this week with two counts of burglary and one of aggravated assault.
Lawyer John Sandston said he appeared as an advocate in the Youth Court at Nelson on Wednesday for the 15-year-old, who had not been at school since July.
Mr Sandston said it was not uncommon for young people appearing in the Youth Court to not be attending school.
“That’s what leads to some of the crime, because they’ve got nothing to do.”
Mr Sandston said the Education Ministry had a legal obligation to find the boy another school. Under the Education Act, anyone 15 or younger has to attend school unless they have a dispensation.
The boy said he was excluded from Nayland College for fighting, before starting Correspondence School, from which he was excluded in July for not doing his work.
“My concern is that with the idle time he has, this has led to the offending alleged to have been committed,” Mr Sandston said.
The boy, who cannot be named, told the Nelson Mail he wanted to go to school but no Nelson school wanted him.
His mother, a solo parent who works fulltime, said she had repeatedly tried to get her son into school, and was frustrated by the lack of help from the ministry.
“I’m at work all day, so he’s hanging around with older boys with nothing to do, and they’re getting in to trouble. Every time I answer the door, the police are there.”
A spokesman for Education Minister Chris Carter said the mother had contacted his office and the boy’s case was referred to the South Island student support manager. He said that if schools did not take a student, it was then up to the ministry to step in.
The mother of the 14-year-old boy told the Nelson Mail the education system had “washed its hands” of her son, who had spent more time in court than at school this year.
She wanted the ministry to give her son, and others like him, dispensation not to attend school, so he could get a job instead of getting involved in crime.
Her son had been at Broadgreen Intermediate, Waimea Intermediate, Nayland College and Youth Nelson before being enrolled in the Correspondence School without her consultation, she said.
No school would take him, and she believed that his excessive free time meant he was bored and getting into trouble.
The mother said she was getting “shunted” between government departments, yet none would find a solution to her problem.
Nelson MP Nick Smith said both mothers had contacted him out of extreme frustration, as they felt their pleas for help were being ignored by government agencies, which knew that their sons were not in school.
He said the boys highlighted the link between truancy and crime. National has a policy of having everyone aged under 18 in some sort of training, work or youth programme.
“We are just asking for disaster in having youth doing nothing for months.”
The ministry did not respond to questions from the Nelson Mail in time for publication Thursday morning.