7. Question No. 7—EducationERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Minister of EducationQuestion No. 7—Education7. ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Minister of Education: Does he stand by all of his statements and actions?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Yes in the context in which they were made or undertaken.Erica Stanford: Can he explain why his actions to improve attendance over the last five years have seen the number of unenrolled students double to 8500?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The decline in attendance in New Zealand schools started in around 2015 and it has continued to decline in the time that we have been in Government. There are a range of factors that contribute to that. One of course is that the Attendance Services which operate under relatively long-term funding contracts have not been delivering the level of performance that we would expect of them. We're currently in the process of reviewing that model.Erica Stanford: How can he blame the changes made nine years ago to the Attendance Services when the number of children chronically absent for two or more terms has increased from under 7000 when he became the Minister to 41000 in 2019 before COVID even hit?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes I am concerned about those numbers and as Minister of Education it is my role and it is my job to make sure that we are doing more to make sure that we are targeting that. Ultimately there are a whole lot of complex social issues that sit underneath those numbers. It is not my job as Minister to get those kids to school. That responsibility sits with their families. Having said that we do want to see those kids re-engaging in education and you'll see that over the period of time that we have been in Government we have continued to increase emphasis on that particular issue and we'll continue to do so.Erica Stanford: Can he explain how he expects the Blue Light South Auckland attendance service to make any meaningful and effective change to the lives of over 2000 unenrolled young people on their books when their attendance officers have a caseload of 200 students each?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We've increased the funding for the Attendance Services since we became the Government to address exactly those kinds of issues after the funding for those services was effectively frozen during the time that National was in Government.Erica Stanford: Can he explain then in light of that answer why in his half-decade as the education Minister the average time taken to get an unenrolled student back to school is now 113 days in 2022 up from 84 days in 2017 despite his claims of all this additional funding?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Because the Attendance Services are not performing as we would expect them to and we are doing something about that.Erica Stanford: What responsibility does he take as the Minister of Education over the last five years for the fact that every single one of the young people aged under 14 referred to the South Auckland cross-agency Social Wellbeing Board for being involved in ram raids were unenrolled or chronically truant?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I am concerned about that. I'm also concerned about the fact that in terms of the data produced by the Social Wellbeing Board 90 percent of the most at-risk young people in New Zealand identified by the Social Wellbeing Board have a parent who is in prison or who has been in prison. There is a range of complex factors underneath youth crime. There are no single causes and there are no single answers. What we have to do is make sure we're approaching that from a range of angles and that is exactly what this Government is doing.