00:02As school attendance rates decline, dissatisfaction with the government's truancy officer regime
00:07is rising.
00:08Everyone knows the black shirts are coming, everyone talks about it, families come into
00:12our office and get uniforms, all come in with that truancy officer on that day, they go
00:17to school the next day, the truancy officers fly off for another term and the kids stop
00:21going to school.
00:22It doesn't work.
00:23Josie Skelton has worked in regional education for nearly a quarter of a century.
00:27She says the highly punitive initiative is failing to revive attendance rates.
00:32You can't do that by someone flying in, going to the family saying we're going to fine you
00:36if you don't go to school so the families take their kids to school and then they leave again.
00:40That is not going to work.
00:42Data shows the Northern Territory's Term 1 attendance rates, which are typically higher than the
00:46rest of the year, have declined by 10% since 2015.
00:49Rates for Aboriginal students have declined four times as fast as non-Aboriginal students,
00:54even after the start of the truancy officer program last year.
00:58It's an issue which has affected regional parts of the Territory most, the attendance
01:01rate across the Barclay region sitting at 42%.
01:05If it's not based on evidence and it's not being evaluated, how do you know it's working?
01:09I think, as I said, the evaluation is ongoing, but I think I've also outlined considerably
01:18in Term 1 and in Term 4 last year, we had seven extreme weather events that have really
01:26had a lot of disruption across school communities.
01:29The government insists the $30 million it's invested into the program is money well spent,
01:34noting that of the 1,400 fines issued by truancy officers so far, around half were later revoked
01:40because the students ended up going to school.
01:43Member Filingiari, Marion Scrimgeour, once proven community-led solutions introduced,
01:48including bilingual learning and cultural supports delivered in conjunction with local families.
01:53I think that it's almost like they're afraid to, you know, because they don't want to be accused of
01:58being woke. Well, it's not about being woke, it's about caring about what that child's life trajectories
02:05are going to be beyond a childhood to adulthood. A lesson to learn when the numbers don't add up.
