School Enrolment and Attendance Measure (SEAM) 103-02000000

The School Enrolment and Attendance Measure (SEAM) ended on 31 December 2017.

The Australian and Northern Territory Governments remain committed to supporting families and communities to get their children to school every day and to improve school attendance in remote communities:

• The Remote School Attendance Strategy continues in the communities where it currently operates, with local staff working to help families to get their kids to school every day possible
• The Northern Territory Department of Education (NT DoE) Senior Attendance and Truancy Officers (SATOs) continue to monitor attendance in select communities
• Services Australia Social Workers continue to visit communities as part of their general work

SEAM encouraged customers SEAM target locations ensure their children were enrolled and regularly attending school by linking enrolment and regular attendance with the parent/guardian's schooling requirement payments.

Where enrolment and/or attendance requirements were not met for a child, the customer's schooling requirement payment may have been suspended or cancelled.

Customers were subject to SEAM requirements if they:

• lived in one of the SEAM target locations
• were claiming or receiving a schooling requirement payment
• had at least 14% care of one schooling requirement child, and
• the child was not in receipt of a schooling requirement payment in their own right (for example, Youth Allowance (YA))

The Resources page contains the list of SEAM target locations.

School enrolment information was obtained through an information exchange between the agency and Northern Territory Department of Education (NT DoE). Where a child was not confirmed as enrolled the customer was sent an enrolment notice and given 21 days to provide their child's enrolment details or advise of a reasonable excuse or special circumstance.

If a customer failed to satisfy the enrolment requirements a sanction may have been applied and the customer's schooling requirement payment suspended. If the enrolment information was provided within 13 weeks of suspension, the payment was able to be restored with arrears paid for the suspension period. If the suspension continued for more than 13 weeks the payment may have been cancelled.

Education authorities along with the agency supported families to ensure their children were regularly attending school by holding conferences with parents/guardians (with social work support where required) and developing attendance plans.

Where a customer failed to attend the conference and/or failed to agree to a school attendance plan, or the child failed to conform with the school attendance plan the education authority issued a compliance notice.

If the customer did not comply with the requirements of the compliance notice and no special circumstances existed, a sanction was applied and the customer's payment suspended.

Where an enrolment or attendance sanction was applied for 91:

• consecutive days the customer's schooling requirement payment was automatically cancelled, or
• cumulative days (as sanctions had been ended and reapplied or special circumstances existed), the customer's schooling requirement payment may have been manually cancelled. In some cases a customer's payment could remain suspended for more than 13 weeks

A customer may request a review of one of the following decisions in relation to SEAM. These include:

• payments were suspended/cancelled due to them failing to comply with an enrolment notice
• payments were suspended/cancelled due to failing to comply with a compliance notice
• schooling requirement payment was granted and immediately suspended

If a customer requests a review for one of the above reasons, see Request for an explanation, quality check or review (CLK).