As schools move to remote learning, they are already losing track of their most at-risk kids.
For many kids, school holidays are a nightmare. Some are at the mercy of addicted, violent adults. Some go without the food they'd normally be given at school. "When term begins, it takes us four weeks to get the kids back into the routine of not being in a psychological state of fight or flight," says one principal.
While schools are technically open to vulnerable kids, many "just will not go", he says. "The longer this goes on, the greater the detachment. If you don't complete year 12, it affects your income, your health and social connections for the rest of your life. The departmental officers who usually knock on doors or sit down with parents or intercept kids at court appearances if they fall out of the system without permission before age 17 are no longer allowed that close social contact.
"Those jobs will become their station in life, and that's not giving them the opportunities they could have had if they had completed their HSC," the principal says."The second level are the kids who are highly at risk of either moving into crime or being party to crime. The police are nervous; they've got serious concerns about kids in some houses."
Up to 50 per cent of his kids are still attending school. "I think it's because I give them food," he says. "That's what they will always come for."
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