Keeping an eye on school students

Andy Phillips works hard to keep on top of attendance at Gate Pa School. Photo / John Borren

Keeping an eye on attendance is one of many jobs in a school carried out by support staff and one Andy Phillips does well.

Mr Phillips monitors attendance at Gate Pa School and also helps out with smaller IT problems.

When school starts for the day, teachers take the class roll and enter in any unexplained absences on an electronic system called Musac Edge.

Mr Phillips starts his day at 9am and begins working through the list of absentees collated on the Edge system, calling their parents (nicely) to find out why the children are not at school.

"There are some families that are not as good as others at getting the children to attend regularly. It's not high on their priorities, which is quite sad."

Mr Phillips said absences could be due to illness or to a death in the family, but in some cases there were other reasons for parents keeping their children home.

"Sadly, we get some parents keeping their kids home because of a lack of food, if there's no food for their children's lunches.

"Or if it's a wet day, the parents don't want to bring out the younger toddlers and babies to walk with them to school."

The other side of Mr Phillips' job is collating a list of jobs for the weekly IT technician who visits the school. He speaks with teachers to find out any technology-related issues in the classroom and passes this information on or, if it's a smaller job, he will fix it.

"That can range from having issues with a printer right through to internet or network problems."

He has also helped out with teacher aiding in the past.

Mr Phillips enjoys working with the team at the school.

"There are a wide range of cultures on the staff here, as we do with the students. It's a really friendly, inviting place to work."

He also voluntarily runs the staff social committee and is the school's support staff representative on primary school union New Zealand Education Institute.