Improving attendance - managing truancy and the prosecution process
These guidelines, together with the updated Attendance Guidelines, are for school boards and management, and they are designed to help them effectively manage non-attendance.
The guidelines explain:
- effective truancy case management
- how to intervene with school support to improve truant students' attendance
- how boards may prosecute parents for the truancy of their child when truancy case management fails to improve a student's attendance.
Parental prosecution is considered a last resort when truancy is ongoing, persistent and appears to be, tactically or actually, condoned by parents, and all previous school interventions to help the student regularly attend school have been unsuccessful. The guidelines outline strategies to manage truancy cases until the problem is resolved.
These guidelines explain how the prosecution process works and include examples and templates of letters that can be used when truancy case management is proceeding to prosecution. The guidelines also include an application form to apply for legal cost reimbursement.
All schools have been sent two copies of these guidelines . A PDF version is also available to download below. If you have difficulty opening or reading PDF documents, or need an accessible version, please contact publications@minedu.govt.nz [no spam].