Tinetti’s plans to reform the NVA and truancy services

politics

Jan Tinetti wouldn’t say no to the Education Secretary, but for now she is happy with increased workload to allow Chris Hipkins to focus on his new police portfolio

Getting children to school regularly is the number one issue for Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti, who is responsible for reforming attendance and truancy services.

The prime minister’s reshuffle earlier this month didn’t get the former Bay of Plenty director promoted, but with an estimated one-third increase in workloads, she has absorbed much of the slack.

Tinetti says she never told Jacinda Ardern directly that she wants to become education minister, but admits to Newsroom that she “would never say no.”

“I’m not worried about the title… if it does one day I’ll take it with open arms, but I’m not worried about it either,” she said.

“I’m more excited now because I have an even bigger mandate within the education sector than I’ve had before.”

Ardern tried twice and failed to get Chris Hipkins out of the teaching role so he could focus his time on some of the many other duties he had such as health, Covid-19 and leader of the house.

Hipkins’ great passion in politics is education, and he’s holding the wallet again, despite taking on the beefy police job that Ardern says is a government focus.

But something had to be done, so in her rescheduling announcement, Ardern said a significant portion of the work would be shifted to Tinetti instead.

As a result, she was given the oversight of Te Mahau within the Ministry of Education, which is responsible for the education network and operational decisions for Anglophone schools, as well as for the reforms of tomorrow’s schools.

This is in addition to its delegations on learning support, the refresh of the curriculum, changes to the Commission and the ongoing attendance and engagement strategy.

“I led the curriculum renewal and you can’t do that without looking at the Commission or the work that Te Mahau is doing to support that. The fact that I now have the responsibilities is a good thing, because I can have those direct conversations and do not have to go through the cabinet of the minister.”

This week, Tinetti will make announcements about the Commission’s changes as the government seeks to alleviate some of the workload of teachers who are increasingly battling burnout.

The changes are being made alongside decisions about how best to revamp the curriculum, and Tinetti told Newsroom, “in fact, nothing is off the table.”

That extends to making the Commission optional at level one, a decision that has yet to be made but likely won’t make it into this week’s announcement, she said.

Tinetti’s other priority is truancy reform, something Hipkins told Newsroom in May that he was on his radar to roll back as it wasn’t working as intended.

After a 2012 investigation, truancy was outsourced, meaning schools lost truant officers locally and in some cases from their communities.

Tinetti said this was her experience when she was principal of the Merivale School until five years ago, where truant officers had no relationship with the school or families.

“I don’t believe the idea when those services were taken away made things worse, but it really made things worse,” she told Newsroom.

“The title doesn’t worry me…if it does one day I’ll take it with open arms, but it doesn’t worry me either.” – Jan Tinetti

There have been two pilots in the last 18 months testing new ways to provide truancy and wrap services to schools and last week Tinetti received a report on how they are doing.

She was reluctant to go into too much detail as she hadn’t read the full reports on the pilots in both Kawerau and South Auckland, but she was “encouraged” by what she’d seen so far.

Tinetti said she met with the New Zealand Headmasters Federation earlier this month and the consensus is that schools want the truancy services, which will be revamped later this year, to return to communities rather than being outsourced.

That also means looking at ‘tailor-made approaches’ for some areas, as a rural school like Kawerau has different needs than a large urban school in South Auckland.

At her recent meeting, a director asked Tinetti why the government could not conduct a truancy campaign similar to the ‘Make it Click’ campaign, which convinced many of the benefits of seat belts in cars.

But Tinetti says this is exactly what is being worked on: a nationwide campaign to educate parents, children, businesses and wider communities about why students should be in school regularly and the impact it has on their choices later in life.

It includes input from everyone, even store owners who see students who should be in school at their business and help them get them back to class, she said.

Keeping students in school is about engagement and while Tinetti says she hates the term “alternative education,” it’s something that can be used to reduce truancy.

“Alternative education has to be part of the system and we have to start seeing it as part of the system… sometimes we have square pegs that we try to fit into round holes and we try to shape the pegs all the time.

“What we need to do is change the shape of the hole,” she said.

In the coming weeks, Tinetti expects to make some decisions about the truancy service and how it will be contracted.

She already has officials coming back to her with more information, and once the full results of the pilot have been reviewed, Tinetti hopes to “see changes as soon as possible”.