Has your tamaiti / child or rangitahi / youth been asked to 'stay home for a few days' without a formal letter? Have you been 'encouraged' to enrol them elsewhere to avoid a formal expulsion? Or has the school restricted the hours they can attend school, requiring you to pick them up early or only send them for part of the day?

In Aotearoa New Zealand, these informal practices – which we have termed 'Kiwi' Stand-downs, Suspensions, Exclusions, Expulsions, and Restricted Attendance (KSSEEE events) – often go unrecorded in official government statistics. This means the true extent of the challenges our FASD ākonga face is hidden, and our whānau are being left out of the data that drives policy.

FASD-CAN is changing that. We have launched a new real-time data collection tool to track every instance of KSSEE and attendance restriction. We have called this the KEA Tracker (Kiwi Education and Attendance Tracker).

Whether the incident you have to report is formal or informal we need to know, so we can advocate for the support your family and whānau deserve. So every time they suggest to you that the needs of your student with FASD can’t be met at the school, or they would be better off elsewhere (or words to that effect) – or if you are engaged in more formal disciplinary proceedings – we need you to jump on to the KEA Tracker and let us know!

Click here to find our more about our KEA Tracker and to access the reporting form.

Sign up now for our half-hour webinar on how best to use it – and please spread the word!