Attendance rates dipping at more than 1600 NSW public schools

Fines for parents who don’t send their kids to schools are among the options being floated to fix the crisis. Is your child’s school among the 1600 where attendance is falling?

More than 1600 of the state’s public schools have fewer students turning up to class compared to just three years ago in a worsening attendance crisis across NSW.

Some education stakeholders say punishments like fines for parents who refuse to make their children go to class could be handed out more swiftly in a bid to nip non-attendance in the bud and get students’ learning back on track.

Those calls come after the UK government announced plans for a nationwide program to fine parents who do not send their children to school.

That country takes attendance very seriously, in some cases even sending parents to jail for a few weeks if they do not send their child to class.

Of the 2009 NSW schools for which attendance data is available, 1608 or 80 per cent of those schools recorded worsening attendance rates in 2021 compared to three years beforehand.

The attendance rate is defined as the number of days actually attended by students in Years 1–10 as a percentage of the total number of possible student-days attended during semester one of that year.

Schools which saw their attendance rates drop by more than five per cent included Matraville Sports High, Avoca Public on the Central Coast and Waterfall Public in just south of Sydney.

Empty chairs at empty tables: NSW students are not turning up to class and some have called for on the spot fines to be introduced.

An official report on the attendance statistics said the data was not comparable due to previous years “due to the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic”.

The Auditor General last week declared that school attendance was plunging well before Covid began and in 2021 only one third of students in years one to 10 were going to school more than 90 per cent of the time-- putting their education at risk.

A further breakdown of 2021 school-by-school data found sickness associated with Covid isolation rules was driving non-attendance at a primary school level.

While that was also a factor in high schools, unexplained and unjustified absences increased alongside days lost to suspensions.

Students skipping class could see their parents cop fines. Picture: Nikki Short

“Although attendance rates have generally fallen, attendance for some cohorts fell more than others. Aboriginal students, students in the lowest FOEI quarter as well as students attending schools located in regional locations had relatively large decreases in attendance,” the report said.

Former deputy principal and current Shooters and Fishers NSW MP Mark Banasiak said the current system whereby a student was put on an “attendance improvement plan” was not working.

“You need someone on their case full time, a lot of home school liaison officers, they have lost funding, they aren’t allowed to go to the homes anymore. They used to knock on the door and say ‘come on get out of bed’,” he said.

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Mark Banasiak. Picture: Liam Driver

Parents can be taken for court if students fail to come to class and ultimately be fined — but Mr Banasiak said in his experience the child had lost too much school by then and was disengaged.

Only 31 parents were fined for non-attendance in 2018, the latest year for which data is available.

He said the ability to give out on the spot fines to parents who do not make their children go to class could be effective.

It comes after some students fell even further behind in their studies thanks to Covid school closures.

“It makes the parents more accountable, they would be like ‘I don’t want to get fined, get your arse to school’,” he said.

Despite taking a handful of parents to court, a NSW Department of Education spokesman said they did not consider punitive action such as fines or jail time an appropriate response to encourage school attendance.

“A number of strategies are in place including school-based strategies, home liaison officers, and a media campaign targeting parents is due to be launched in Term 4,” he said.