An Eastern Bay of Plenty couple with two teenagers are the first to be prosecuted under new legislation targeting truancy.

The pair, who had failed to show up at court at an earlier appearance, stood holding hands in the dock in the Whakatāne District Court on Tuesday.

The Education and Training Act 2020 says it is an offence if a parent of a person required to be enrolled at a registered school fails or refuses to ensure that the person is enrolled.

The parent is liable, on conviction, to a fine not exceeding $3000.

The Eastern Bay of Plenty couple, who are parents to two teenage children, pleaded guilty to failing or refusing to ensure their children were enrolled.

They each face two charges.

A summary of facts said the young teens were previously enrolled at a primary school, but had declining attendance since Covid-19.

In 2021, the children were removed from their school roll for continuous absence, but no exemption to home school was obtained, and they remained off any school roll until April 2024.

Through 2022 and 2023, the Ministry of Education sent warning letters to the parents, telling them the children were required to attend school.

In December 2022, the second of three warning letters was sent, and the mother of the children advised Attendance Services in her area that she and her children would not be engaging.

A third letter was sent in September 2023, stating it would be the final letter, and a home visit would take place by either their local Attendance Service, or police youth services.

In April 2024, the children were enrolled in Te Kura, a national school that provides distance learning programmes, but by December 2024, they’d been unenrolled from that, too, after Te Kura received no contact from the family.

On October 7, 2025, Attendance Service sent a further letter to the couple, explaining they’d tried “multiple interventions” to support them.

These included referrals to mentoring to help with Te Kura applications, support for homeschooling applications, offers to meet with the family and a referral to Te Pukaea – a community service in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.

The letter said that unless the children’s attendance improved “significantly”, there would be a “prosecution case” against them.

The letter said: “We do not want to go down this track, but we have been told to issue this warning to you in the hope that you will work with the school(s) and us to make a positive difference in your children’s attendance.”

In a further letter dated October 16, 2025, the Ministry of Education confirmed it would be conducting an investigation under section 243 of the Education and Training Act 2020.

The charges were first heard in court earlier this year, but the couple did not attend the appearance.

However, on Tuesday, they did come to court and, after speaking with a duty lawyer, entered guilty pleas to the two charges they each faced.

Lawyer Jonathan Kay asked Community Magistrate Shaun Cole to sentence the pair on the spot, noting there was “very little case law” on charges of this nature, given it was a “relatively new imposition”.

Prosecutor Molly Tutton-Harris, for the Ministry of Education, confirmed it was “the first prosecution of its kind” under the new legislation, and sought further time for the ministry to provide the court with guidance as to the appropriate sentence.

She also sought name suppression for the defendants, to protect the identity of the children.

The pair will be sentenced in the Whakatāne District Court in October.

Three cases before the courts

According to background material included in the summary of facts, in term two of 2025, 58.4% of students were attending school regularly.

In term three of 2025, it was 50.3%, and in term four of 2025, it rose to 57.3%.

The Government target is to have 80% of students attending school at least 90% of the time by 2030.

The summary also notes that when a child has been “chronically” absent for two or more terms, and schools and attendance providers have taken “all other reasonable actions” to get children back to regular attendance, then the Ministry of Education is notified about possible prosecution.

In a statement to NZME, the Ministry of Education’s deputy secretary of Education Services, Helen Hurst, said the Attendance Prosecutions Unit was established in 2025 to consider cases where parents or caregivers may not have met their legal obligations to enrol their children in school or ensure they attend regularly.

“Since the unit was established, 35 cases have been referred to it,” she said.

“Eighteen cases were resolved before prosecution. Three attendance prosecutions are currently before the courts, and the Ministry has issued a formal warning in a separate case.”

She said parents and caregivers were responsible for making sure their children were enrolled in school and attend regularly.

“Prosecution is a last resort when other efforts to address attendance concerns have not worked,” she said.

While the ministry had previously taken prosecutions for non-enrolment, these are the first prosecutions progressed through the Attendance Prosecutions Unit.

As these matters are before the courts, the ministry wouldn’t comment on individual cases.

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.