Government Wants Law on Suspension

The Government is looking at changing the law to make it compulsory for schools to report details of each case of a child sent home on suspension, Education Minister Wyatt Creech said today. He has been advised that children as young as seven and eight have been suspended from New Zealand schools.

The Government is not wishing to point the finger at schools on this issue. The suspension of a child from school is very serious step at the end of a series of actions. However, when all other avenues have been exhausted, it is a legitimate action a school can take in the best interests of its learning environment, said Mr Creech.

The incidence of suspensions has been increasing overall, but information about individual suspensions as supplied to the Ministry of Education has not been sufficiently robust. We need better information on which to plan future actions.

Suspension figures for each age group of primary school children are now being compiled by the Ministry of Education. In 1995, nine school pupils aged seven were suspended for an unspecified period. In those cases, another school has to be found that is willing to take them, he said.

While the nine suspensions represent only 0.016% of all seven year olds in school in 1995, not enough is known about the reasons why these children are being suspended, and in this respect the legislation is inadequate.

I have talked to the Ministry of Education about amending the suspension provisions in the Education Act, to make it mandatory for schools to supply fuller details of suspensions. The Ministry has been asked to update its guidelines on suspensions in consultation with Crown agencies and key education sector groups. The guidelines will include an expanded section on alternatives that schools might like to consider to suspensions, he said.

Suspensions must be seen in a wide social context. Currently officials of the Ministry of Education, Department of Social Welfare and the Ministry of Health are undertaking joint work to coordinate the activities of Government agencies in providing support for students at risk.

More support is also being offered to primary schools to assist them to help students at risk. For example, the 1995 Budget provided for an additional 60 guidance and learning teacher positions in primary and intermediate schools to raise the total number to 108. Guidance and learning teachers work with students who are at risk because of severe behavioural and/or learning disabilities. There are also 855 new primary classroom teacher positions in this year. This has enabled schools to lower teacher-pupil ratios and to be able to offer more individual help to students.