Non-enrolled youth voices heard in new Research
Overwhelming, hurtful, or distracting social interactions, mental health struggles and hardships and complex lives outside of school driving a greater need for relationships with teachers – are the three main themes revealed as affecting overall engagement and well-being in education detailed in the report Absent Voices: Understanding the stories of Non-Enrolled Tamariki and Rangatahi revealed today.
Commissioned by youth development charity Blue Light, the research was designed to engage and enable the voices of non-enrolled youth, to understand the reasons behind their increasing disengagement from education, and to explore solution pathways to address the significant challenge of their sustainable re-engagement.
“We wanted to create safe spaces for these Tamariki and Rangatahi, so they could tell their stories, express their voices, have them heard, and influence decisions,” says Brendon Crompton, Blue Light Chief Executive.
“Disengagement from school not only robs young people of their future potential but the impacts can also be seen in their outcomes later in life such as violence, substance abuse and unemployment” Brendon comments.
Youth confirmed in this Report that the key transition points for them in their schooling – from primary to intermediate and from intermediate to secondary created significant risk in their engagement in school – yet there was no alternative pathway or structured support for them during these transitions.
“Alternative Education is only available to secondary school students, and the systemic under-funding of this service results in severe restraints in resources which means it does not work for many youth” Brendon states.
The research also highlighted that when in school youth were clear about what they needed to stay in school.
“The emotional, social, and support needs that these youth (who experience hardship and complex lives outside of school) stated they desire from teachers, along with their need to access more effective mental health resources in and out of school, could be addressed through providing trained Youth Workers to mentor, guide them and bridge the gaps in accessing support” Brendon states.
What this research reveals, however, and what was clear from interviewing the non-enrolled youth, was that there is a clear lack of strategies for re-engaging non-enrolled youth back into
education. Their prolonged absence from school, and any form of education, leaves youth with the daunting task of “catching up”.
“When I would stay home and then go to school for like a day, I would have anxiety cos I had missed a lot of homework and that, so I had to like ‘catch up’” states a non-enrolled youth.
“There is a gap in schools’ knowledge about effective engagement strategies for non-enrolled youth successfully and sustainably re-engaging back in school” Brendon notes, “and this is coupled with non-enrolled youth also lacking the knowledge about the pathways for re-engagement that are available, and how they go about accessing the support they need.”
For a full copy of the Report: Absent Voices: Understanding the Stories of Non-Enrolled Tamariki and Rangatahi
About Blue Light
Blue Light is a youth development charity that works in partnership with the Police to build protective factors in the lives of young people aged 6-24, and to minimise the risks, through the delivery of programmes, activities, events and services both nationally and through the work of our 70 branches located across Aotearoa.
Blue Light works with thousands of Tamariki and Rangatahi not enrolled in education through its Ministry of Education contracted NeN service in South Auckland. This service is designed as a brief intervention service to re-engage youth in schooling in the South Auckland area.
Once a young person has not attended school for more than 20 consecutive days, they must be registered as non-enrolled by their school. Prior to this, schools should be utilising an attendance service of some kind to try and keep youth engaged in schooling while they are still enrolled. Anecdotally, many non-enrolled young people on Blue Light’s books seem to leave school with minimal or no intervention recorded.
Blue Light’s NeNs team typically have more than 1500-2000 young people on their books with up to 100 new referrals each week which far exceeds the contracted 1800 per year the service is contracted by the Ministry of Education to deliver.
To deepen the understanding of the lives of these youth, Blue Light collected the stories of 27 of these youth, in association with research consultants from the University of Auckland, and with funding from a Ministry of Education grant, which formed the basis of the report Absent Voices: Understanding the stories of Non-Enrolled Tamariki and Rangatahi.
