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| Dr Michael Johnston | Senior Fellow | michael.johnston@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
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Former Prime Minister, Sir Bill English was in attendance. He was there to discuss policy recommendations made by our two newest researchers, both of whom had taken a day out of school to be there. This story started a year ago, when I received an email from Thomas (TJ) Reding, a teacher at Rototuna Junior High School in Hamilton. TJ and his colleague Dean Watson had run a 'think tank’ project at Rototuna. Each student undertook research on a public policy issue and wrote it up in a report, including recommendations. TJ attached a couple of the 2023 reports. I was impressed with their quality. He also proposed a collaboration with The New Zealand Initiative. After giving it some thought, I suggested that, in 2024, they could run the project as a competition. The two students writing the best reports would visit the Initiative office for a day and write Insights columns based on their reports. Rototuna’s Principal and Board approved the idea, and in March 2024 I visited the school with our Adjunct Fellow, Stephanie Martin, who is also a primary school teacher. We jointly taught a class on what think tanks are and the kind of work we undertake at the Initiative. We discussed the students’ ideas for their projects and helped them refine their thinking. In June, TJ sent me a shortlist of 12 completed projects. I selected two as the clear winners. One, by Cooper Reed, analysed the school truancy problem, and the other, by Athuryann Santharuban, proposed solutions to Hamilton’s worsening traffic congestion. On 23 October, accompanied by TJ and Dean, Cooper and Athuryann flew to Wellington and met the team. After settling in, we held our meeting. I was impressed by the confidence the students displayed in taking our feedback. Being in the presence of a former PM seemed not to intimidate them at all. This week’s Insights 2 is a column by Cooper on his proposals to tackle New Zealand’s truancy crisis. Next week, we will hear from Athuryann on solutions for Hamilton’s traffic congestion. With up-and-coming young thinkers like Cooper and Athuryann, the future of think tanks is bright. We look forward to hiring them in about ten years’ time. |
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| Cooper Reed | Student at Rototuna Junior High School | insights@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
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My friends are not alone. In 2023, only 46% of students nationally regularly attended school. That means that more than half missed at least one day per fortnight without a good reason. Earlier this month, the Education Review Office reported that 10% of New Zealand’s students are chronically absent. The Ministry of Education’s Attendance Service has grown rapidly in recent years. Yet its progress in reducing truancy has been minimal. Rather than simply increasing the number of Attendance Officers, a smarter approach is needed. The task of the Attendance Service is to ensure that students attend school. To be more effective, it must work more closely with teachers and principals to make sure that attendance at every school is maintained at a high level. Students skip school for many reasons, including a lack of motivation and willingness to attend school, and other significant reasons, such as bullying, and family troubles. Furthermore, some caregivers are supporting these decisions by their children, making the situation worse. To make the Attendance Service more effective, a restructure is necessary. Schools should be able to appoint their own Truancy Officers to take responsibility for attendance. If Truancy Officers were located in particular schools, they could form relationships with truant students and their families to support them better. To effectively reduce truancy, the different reasons students skip school must be taken into account. Localising Truancy Officers would enable them to tailor their work to support attendance by addressing the specific reasons that particular students are truant. Such a restructure would not be costly. In fact, if it made each Truancy Officer more effective, it might even save money. The effectiveness of the approach is likely to vary, with community and school factors influencing its effectiveness. It may take longer to see results in some schools than others. Localising Truancy Officers would help address New Zealand’s school attendance problem, but it probably won’t entirely solve the truancy problem. Over time, further solutions should be developed to suit the needs of specific communities and families. Localised responses to truancy are likely to be more effective than a top-down approach from the central government. But, if the attendance service were structured better, we could achieve a reduction in truancy relatively quickly. |
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| Dr Oliver Hartwich | Executive Director | oliver.hartwich@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
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Like all addicts, I have a splendid rationalisation: My fortnightly column on European affairs for Newsroom requires me to stay informed about German politics. How convenient. But who am I kidding? No journalist needs to maintain multiple German newspaper subscriptions. Or listen to German radio with disturbing regularity. Or know the names of all 16 state premiers – and their predecessors. Despite having left Germany more than two decades ago, I remain hopelessly devoted to following its political machinations. In truth, there is no rational explanation for my behaviour. German politics is like a poorly scripted soap opera. The acting is dreadful, the plot twists are implausible. Surely there are better things I could do with my time. Perhaps updating my emergency earthquake kit. Or reading terms and conditions for online subscriptions. Or dealing with Wellington City Council. Yet here I am, all excited about Germany’s latest political crisis. The scripts keep getting more absurd. You can read all about it in my latest Newsroom column. Take last week’s episode. The Chancellor sacked his finance minister on live television. The former Justice Minister responded by publishing an electronic song about it. The Federal Election Commissioner claimed early elections might be impossible due to a paper shortage. The paper industry immediately contradicted this claim. The opposition suggested the Chancellor had orchestrated the paper crisis to delay the election. The Chancellor denied this. Europe’s industrial powerhouse had descended into arguing about office supplies. You could not make it up. One might think that delivering such entertainment would satisfy my appetite for watching institutional dysfunction. But no. My other German addiction is following FC Schalke 04. Once a giant of European football, my club now celebrates unexpected victories against bottom-placed teams in the second division. Their 2-0 win against Jahn Regensburg made my Monday morning. Perhaps there is a connection between following German politics and supporting Schalke. Both require a fondness for tragedy and a high tolerance for administrative incompetence. Some people cannot quit smoking. Others struggle without caffeine. My affliction is following German institutions that reliably deliver disappointment. The 84 percent of my fellow Germans yearning for early elections probably do not realise their soap opera is unlikely to improve even after the votes are counted, whenever that may be. But like me, they know there is always hope. Or at least another cliffhanger episode. Read Oliver Hartwich’s Newsroom column about the implosion of Germany’s traffic light coalition here. |
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