00:00Ten years ago, the Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister hit the streets of Yuendumu, alongside
00:07a crew of new attendance officers.
00:10Do you think Ezekiel would go to school?
00:13Today the NT government announcing a fresh crackdown.
00:17People need to remember that not sending your children to school is against the law.
00:21No new laws are required, as existing powers already allow education staff to find parents
00:28whose children regularly miss school.
00:31If parents don't get their kids to school, we're going to give them every opportunity
00:35to do so, but at some point in time, the school attendance officer can issue a fine of I think
00:41$370.
00:43In Yuendumu between 2014 and 2017, the local schools saw attendance lift 3% after the arrival
00:51of the Abbott government's yellow shirts.
00:54Territory-wide, attendance dropped 3% over the same period, and has since dropped a further
01:005%.
01:01Successive strategies since then get an F for fail from those who've seen them come
01:06and go.
01:07Sometimes it's an attendance officer, sometimes it's a truancy officer, sometimes it's a school
01:11engagement officer, but there's no evaluative evidence to suggest that any of those approaches
01:18have made any difference to attendance rates.
01:24Mr Gunther also points out there are remote schools with attendance over 90% doing things
01:30very differently.
01:31They want to be there at school because it's a fun place to be, it's an engaging place
01:36to be, it's a welcoming place to be, both for parents and the children.
01:40The government says there are 35 new attendance officers across the Territory this month,
01:45with $3 million in extra funding per year to support more.
01:49And unlike previous iterations of the policy, these new attendance officers will be trained
01:53up to issue warnings and fines.
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