The State Government must take an active role with public messaging to get students engaged and attending school for Term 4, as attendance rates are yet to return to pre-COVID levels.
There are lower levels of infection in the community, so Term 4 provides a good opportunity to boost attendance rates and make up for lost time earlier in the year.
In Term 1, 2022 a total of 28908 students were required to isolate due to COVID-19. Only sixty-five per cent of these students were recorded as participating in learning at home and on average students missed 2.3 days of learning.
This adds up to 66,488 missed days of schooling for Tasmanian children.
We encourage Minister Jaensch to take an active role, encouraging attendance if students are well and supporting schools to finish the year strongly.
There are some good initiatives like School Improvement Teams, Student Wellbeing Survey, trauma support and Learning in Families Together but clearly more needs to be done to get attendance rates heading in the right direction.
A strong focus to understand non-attendance, including improving engagement with families to understand the causes of non-attendance would help to boost attendance.
Year 11 and 12 extension school attendance remains very low and more support for those schools and students is required to improve attendance and engagement.
The Liberal Government needs to get the basics right in education. The best place for Tasmanian children and their development is in school if they are well.
Josh Willie MLC
Shadow Minister for Education and Early Years
