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Plan to keep troubled youths in school questioned

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Plan to keep troubled youths in school questioned

3News NZ

The Secondary Principals Association has questioned a Youth Court Judge's comments on keeping troubled young people in schools

The Secondary Principals Association has questioned a Youth Court Judge's comments on keeping troubled young people in schools

School principals say the idea of keeping troubled youths in school is potentially too unrealistic.

Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft says schools and teachers can help youths out of a cycle of crime and that to keep them actively involved in education offers the best hope of reducing youth offending.

 

But the President of the Secondary Principals Association Patrick Walsh says the safety of other students must be taken into consideration.

“It’s a difficult balancing act,” he says.

“While we have concerns for the individual needs of students we have to have a greater priority for the health and safety of the other hundreds of students in our schools.”

Mr Walsh says some issues are too serious for schools to deal with.

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Comments

17/07/2012 8:31:02 a.m.

S wrote:

These youths usually need mentoring along with tight supervision and hands on learning experiences...Also every child has different types of learning ability, whether it is hands on, visual, audio etc, so schools need to be more adaptable to different learning styles.

16/07/2012 3:28:11 p.m.

Greg wrote:

Put them in Charter Schools, After all the system is being introduced to fix up the long tail of these mainly male failures of the overly pandering feminised public system. Or are Charter Schools really being designed to cream the top so as to access a higher portion of taxpayer funding, and it will take Judges ordering to put them back on the books. Is this a test case to whip public schools back into line.

16/07/2012 2:19:36 p.m.

pondering wrote:

@ Mr Walsh. Most youthful criminal activities are spurred by boredom and frustration, sometimes anger. A good recipe for this is pushing kids out of school instead of catering to their alternative education needs. Make them feel useless and disenfranchised from society. Very few truant or learning challenged children and youths are uncontrollably violent or indeed criminal. Most of them are very bright and just need a little extra time to teach them to read.

16/07/2012 11:58:22 a.m.

jan wrote:

because the system now does a mental health check on 4 year old children, this problem won't exist because the so called troubled youth will be sent straight to prison from age 5. Sure a few good children will be misdiagnoised, but if it serves the majority of the population its worth it is it? Im sure the sensible sentencing trust will back this brave new inititive and in the process they can then disband. I mean if this country wants to get rid of down syndrome children then who is left to pick on?