Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Sending children to school when they're sick has consequences for everyone and keeping them home is the right thing to do, says Labour leader Chris Hipkins.
Part of the Government's plan to improve school attendance was announced yesterday and included new public health guidance about when a student is well enough to go to school.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour said "not every ailment means that you should not attend school".
But Hipkins, a former education minister, said as recently as last year principals were struggling to find enough well teachers after students went to school with Covid-19.
"Because of course what happens, the kid goes to school with Covid, they give it to other kids, they also give it to the teachers.
"The teachers then stay home, because they need to isolate and they need to get better, and the principal says 'hang on a minute I've got kids turning up to school and I haven't got enough teachers to teach them'."
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Parents should send their children to school unless there was a good reason not to, Hipkins said. And that didn't include a holiday.
"But if you're keeping your kids home for the right reason, because they're sick, then we should actually be saying to those parents that is a good thing to do.
"There's very good reasons why we still want parents to keep their kids home if their kids have got the flu, or a cold, or Covid... other kids get sick, teachers get sick, then other parents get sick and it has a flow on consequence for everybody," he said.
"I don't want to be saying to parents that you should send kids to school even when they're sick because they've already missed five days you're somehow going to become a bad parent because they get sick a second time in a school term."
Hipkins acknowledged there was a problem with school attendance, but said the Government targets wouldn't help address it.