When Michael Johnston was nine, his academic father packed the family up for a sabbatical year in London. The experience in 1977 included a six-week campervan trip around Europe, where his impressionable eyes gazed at the brushstrokes of Michelangelo's heavenly masterpiece on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
“Art galleries weren't really my thing, but seeing that switched me on in a way that looking at it in a picture never would have,” says Johnston, a senior education fellow at the conservative think tank the New Zealand Initiative.
“It was just amazing and it kind of awoke something in me about art, you know.”
But would he suggest every New Zealand parent take their kids out of school for the university of life, AKA world travel? Not exactly. It’s tricky.
New Zealand has developed a culture of truancy where school is optional for far too many students, says Johnston.
It’s an issue the government has clearly in its scope with this year’s budget earmarking $140 million to improve attendance over the next four years. A new report released on Wednesday highlights that attitudes towards truancy have improved. However, it also found that many families continue to take kids out of school for family events and holidays.
Six months ago, Ella Ewens returned from a year overseas with her husband and two kids, aged eight and 10. Their Auckland school was supportive of the trip, and the family home-schooled the kids for at least an hour most days while visiting 26 countries.
“We found that overall there were so many learning opportunities to be had.”
Ewens says her kids returned from the trip on par academically with their school peers and, in some subjects, they were ahead (overseas data often shows homeschool kids generally outperforming traditional school students).
Then there were the life skills her kids also excelled at, according to Ewens. This includes staying calm in chaotic situations, resolving disputes, and negotiating.
“... Dealing with being hot, or cold, dealing with boredom, getting insect bites, resilience,” said Ewens, adding to the list of life lessons from travel.
Rev Dr Pennie Togiatama’s 14-year-old daughter is living in Niue for 12 months and attending school there. Togiatama’s parents recently returned to the island after 50 years in New Zealand, and the plan is for all the grandchildren to take turns living there for 12 months to help care for them.
“It's to keep them grounded on who they are, understanding their culture and just maintaining some of those family values...” says Togiatama, a senior education lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology.
She helped other students prepare for trips away from school and supported parents in keeping up their learning as a former school teacher.
She has seen some schools take a double standard when it comes to missing school for, say, a rugby trip overseas.
“Schools are happy for that to happen, right? ‘Yeah, go, go, go.’
“Then you have a family who has an opportunity to travel for a family occasion - just as important, just as valuable, but different - and then you have the school come down a little bit harder on that family to say, ‘Hey, we've got these school rules. They need to be attending, blah blah blah blah blah.”
However, Johnston said the first few years are important for instilling the routine of daily schooling.
“It is really crucial that the first couple of years when they're learning to read, and they're learning to write, and they're learning basic mathematics, those things require consistency.”
Irregular attendance can also make it harder for teachers to keep track of how a student is progressing if they are missing chunks of school or having regular days off.
“I don't want to be overly rigid about this. There may be times when it’s sort of reasonable to have a child not attend school for an important family event or something like that, but I do think that we've developed a culture that doesn't see regular attendance as important as it really is.”
Karen Nairn, an education professor at the University of Otago, says the planned removal of cultural elements in the New Zealand curriculum, such as art history and reducing outdoor education, might spur parents to consider overseas experiences to fill the gap.
Some schools go to great lengths to fundraise and provide their students with an overseas experience as part of their schooling. In other situations, well-off families might provide a similar trip for their kids.
Parents might also want to take their children to a tangihanga (funeral) of a relative or Te Matatini, New Zealand’s largest kapa haka celebration.
“I think all of those are really valuable learning experiences for children, and particularly in the light of this government's narrowing of the curriculum.”
What are the rules around missing school in New Zealand?
By law, Kiwi kids aged from 6 to 16 are required to go to school every day.
Whānau, parents and caregivers have the responsibility of ensuring it happens or letting the school know on the day if students will be absent. Family holidays or taking time off for extracurricular activities (not organised by school) are not acceptable reasons for being absent.
Schools and kura are expected to record and report on attendance and let parents or carers know if they haven't received any notification of an absence.
Regular attendance is defined as going to class more than 90 percent of the time.
Truancy is different - it's when a student is frequently late, misses a class or misses entire days or weeks of their schooling.
Illness or attending a tangi or funeral are acceptable reasons for not attending - but the school must be told.
If a child is continually truant from school and it is decided the parent / caregiver is condoning the truancy they can be prosecuted.
If a child is truant for more than 20 days in a row without a good reason, and the caregiver hasn't been in touch with the school, it can remove the child from the roll.
After that the Attendance Service will suggest options such as: Correspondence School, finding an alternative education provider that might better suit a child who doesn't fit into a mainstream or an exemption from the Ministry of Education to leave school earlier than 16.
