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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Oz targets aboriginal truancy
It's called playing hooky in Canada, skiving in England and dossing in Ireland. In Australia, the time-honoured tradition of avoiding school is most commonly referred to as "playing the wag."
"Waggers" have, in another time-honoured tradition, often found themselves at the receiving end of some harsh physical punishment from irate parents.
But in recent weeks in the northern state of Queensland, it's the parents who are copping the flogging from a government determined to put a brake on an alarming trend of truancy in Australia.
Figures released Thursday by the federal department of education reveal 45 parents have had their welfare payments suspended for 10 days under "school enrolment and attendance trials."
The suspension of welfare (mainly unemployment benefits) is for either not providing evidence a child is enrolled in a school, or failing to make sure a child is going to school on a regular basis.
The scheme was begun by the Labor government in 2009 in partnership with the Queensland government.
Critics have suggested it is discriminatory because it's aimed primarily at indigenous communities, where truancy is higher than the national average.
But while the Queensland scheme involves 30 schools in the remote indigenous communities of Doomadgee and Mornington Island, it also involved schools in suburban Brisbane where "playing the wag" also is a serious problem.
The scheme is funded until June 30, 2011, when its effects will be assessed. Both federal and state governments are hoping it will lift school retention rates in problem areas from 75 per cent to 90 per cent by 2020.
The World Socialist website has suggested the trials are an attack on welfare rights.
"The measure is part of a deepening assault on the right to welfare," the site said earlier this year. "Truancy is a complex social problem, bound up with the impact of more than two decades of de-industrialization and economic restructuring."
In Queensland, however, the opposition spokesman for education, Bruce Flegg, believes the trials don't go far enough.
"Labor has focused on the worst offenders, while letting thousands of students continue to get away with wagging school," he said in a statement. "Suspending welfare payments will only apply in the worst cases of neglect of children's education, but we still need to see action taken on the wider problem of truancy."
The Queensland community appears to agree.
Prompted by the trial, local businesses have begun refusing service to school age kids during school hours.
Schools now have agreements with shops and police -- from Brisbane all the way to the northern city of Cairns more than 1,600 kilometres away -- to ensure school age kids aren't getting served between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Queensland largest circulation paper, the Courier Mail, this week highlighted the need for action to keep kids in the classroom.
The paper reported nearly 90,000 Queensland students, about one in five, attended less than 85 per cent of classroom days in the first stage of this school year.
In Western Australia, the state teachers union has also welcomed moves to track students moving from one school to another to ensure they don't decide to give up on their education mid-transit.
Western Australia is also looking at stepping up prosecution rates of parents who fail to ensure their children are attending. (It is an offence to allow Australian kids to skip school but the law is obviously difficult to prosecute).
Anne Gisborne, president of the Western Australian Teachers Union, said truancy interferes with a child's capacity to engage with teaching and learning programs.
"It is good to see that there is going to be a focus in respect to truancy," she said.
Jenny Macklin, minister of families, housing, community services and indigenous affairs, clearly agrees.
Macklin said the welfare suspensions were needed but only are used as a last resort.
"All children deserve the best chance in life and they can't get that if they're not at school getting a decent education," she said.
Michael Madigan is the Winnipeg Free Press correspondent in Australia. He writes about politics for the Brisbane-based Courier Mail.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 8, 2010 A15
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