STUFF
In its first pre-budget reveal, the Government has committed $40 million to help schools reduce truancy.
Ragne Maxwell calls them the Covid generation – teenagers whose futures have been blighted by the pandemic, working part-time to support their families and studying when they can.
Many of them were on track to gain university entrance.
“[They are] filling shelves till midnight, then drifting in at about 11 or 12 trying to do a few hours work before they’ve got to get back to start their shift at four, or they’re starting their shift at two in the afternoon and they’re leaving [school] early,” the Porirua College principal explains.
“We are in real danger of having a Covid generation whose education was impacted on because they have extreme bad luck to be in education – particularly in secondary education and most especially in senior secondary education – through these Covid years.”
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