Government To Fine Parents

Welfare parents of children that are repeatedly truanting - 'wagging' - are facing the potential of having money deducted from their fortnightly payments if their children are missing school too much.

It's been bouncing around the news and radio all day. Apparently, the government seems to think that making truanting a problem for all to sort out is the way to nip it in the bud. They're claiming that getting the parents more involved - and how much more involved can one be with there's a monetary penalty? - will encourage them to dissuade the children from missing school.

There's a few issues with this.

A - If a kid is going to wag, a kid is going to wag. It's not fair to the parents who are already struggling to have to add that to their plates.

B - What about parents not on welfare? How are they going to be "punished"? Are schools going to start sending out fines to these people? How long before they then have to raise school fees due to "printing costs" or something similar?

C - This isn't a deterrent to children. At all.

Now, you can drive your child up to the gates of their school every day. You can watch them walk through and into the grounds. You can pick them up at the end of every day, too. Doesn't mean you, as a parent, will know what they did in those six hours.

I recall many students at my high school that would come to school, catch a bus into the local shopping centre for the day and be back at school in time to be picked up. Then there is, of course, the ones that simply skip whichever classes they don't want to attend. They may well be at school up until the last class, which they then wag. Does that change the dollar amount their parent is charged?

I have a hard time understanding how this could be a good, or effective, thing.

If they want to punish the children that repeatedly miss school, they need to punish the kid, not their parent. I think, in general, most parents of these children either don't know what's going on or don't know how to fix it. If they do know about it, how is making them suffer going to help anyone? We all know how much people get from the government and it's hard enough to struggle through each week as it is. Do we really need to add to their worry for something they, often, can't control?

Here's hoping it doesn't come to pass, I say.