It’s not surprising that the Government’s initiatives to tackle truancy in schools has had no real effect on the 30,000 students cutting class every day, as truancy is the symptom – not the cause – of a broken school system, ACT MP Sir Roger Douglas said today.“Under the current system, many students are locked into their closest school, regardless of whether it’s meeting their needs. From a school’s perspective, when difficult children are truant, it’s actually good for them – fewer problems in class, less work – so they have no incentive to care,” Sir Roger said.

“Doubling the funding on a truancy initiative that has had no results is only wasting taxpayers’ dollars.

Instead of investing in systems which force kids to stay in schools that are failing them, we should instead invest in initiatives that ensure schools are working hard to keep them.

“By allocating the funding to the children it changes the incentives. Schools must figure out how to keep those children or face declining school enrolments.

Any school that could successfully attract all those truant children by offering them an education that suits them would suddenly be operating a very successful school.

“Creating choice and competition in our school system is the best thing we can do for our children and until the Government addresses this problem we will continue to see many of our children slipping through the cracks,” Sir Roger said.

ENDS