Cairns schools: Youth crime rate spirals as data reveals wagging Far North kids worst in QLD
Experts have linked cutting class with spiralling youth crime rates, as new data reveals the shocking amount of school Far North kids are missing.
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EXPERTS have linked cutting class with spiralling youth crime rates, as new data reveals Far North kids have skipped more school in the past decade than any other students in the state.
An Education Queensland report has laid bare the region’s poor school attendance statistics between 2016-2020, showing students in Cairns and surrounds had wagged at much higher rates than their metropolitan peers.
Only 85.5 per cent of children attended school in 2020, dropping further from 87.2 per cent in 2019.
A parliamentary committee report tabled in 2015 exposed the region as having the lowest percentage of students attending school 85 per cent of the time or more for 2013 and 2014.
Department reports also showed overall student attendance in the Far North had remained a step behind the rest of the state for five years running between 2010-2015.
Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs executive director Michael Drane said being engaged in education institutions significantly reduced the risk of young people reoffending.
A special Youth Justice Taskforce working in the region had recently launched a number of targeted panels, some of which included a focus on the links between education and high risk youth offenders, he said.
“We know if they are engaged in school or an education pathway they are significantly less lightly to reoffend,” Mr Drane said.
AFL Cape York House founder Rick Hanlon said there was positive data to support better outcomes for young people who graduated from Year 12.
“We need to ask ourselves why our young people might not be engaging in school,” Mr Hanlon said.
“I think we need to have a broader conversation. Let’s look at why it’s occurring.
“The why is the biggest thing that we need to spend our time thinking about.”
AFL Cape York House is a not-for-profit organisation with a campus in Portsmith that helps young people transition from remote communities.
“Young people may be disengaging from school because they don’t feel connected,” he said.
“They are banding together with these kids in stealing cars because that’s how they connect.
“What happens with these young people is they gravitate to other people who aren’t in school because that’s their connection.”
Car theft has exploded across the region, with 17 cars already stolen this month and 162 taken in March.
Mr Hanlon said AFL Cape York House focused heavily on education when it first opened 10 years ago but now it centred around students’ wellbeing.
“If a person’s wellbeing isn’t OK, they can’t learn. You’ve got all this distraction. You’ve got all these problems and you’re worrying with what’s going into life,” he said.
“To us now, our work is about our wellbeing in our young people and how we can assist them to get them in a good space to get into a classroom and learn.”
Former child safety executive Joanne Borg said she believed it was crucial Education Queensland shared data around young people who were not attending school with other key stakeholder organisations, including police and Child Safety, Youth Justice and health departments.
“There’s no more hiding behind privacy. The child protection legislation allows for detail sharing,” she said.
“If a child’s behaviour does not cause them harm but it causes other people harm, they become unsafe because of their offending (so information should be shared across services).”
Police have been contacted for comment.
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Originally published as Cairns schools: Youth crime rate spirals as data reveals wagging Far North kids worst in QLD
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