2 December 2025
By Willow Duffy, CEO, Safeguarding Children
In recent weeks Aotearoa has watched a deeply distressing court case unfold about two children, Yuna and Minu, whose bodies were found in suitcases several years after their deaths. Behind the headlines are two real children who laughed, learned and were once part of a school community, and then were not.
Many people are asking a very understandable question.
How is it possible for children to be taken out of school and effectively disappear, without anyone managing to find them or keep them safe?
As a child safeguarding organisation, we share that concern. But the answer lies much more in how our systems are designed than in any one person or school failing to care.
What actually happens when a child stops coming to school?
In Aotearoa, schools are required to follow a clear process when a child stops attending.
They are expected to:
- Follow up absences quickly
- Try to contact parents or caregivers
- Work with attendance services where needed
- Keep clear records of attendance patterns
If a student has been unjustifiably absent for 20 consecutive school days, and the school has not been told the absence is temporary, the principal must record that the student has left the school. This is often called the twenty-day rule.
The student is then taken off the roll in ENROL, the national register of student enrolments.
In other words, at the school level there is a defined process. In the case currently in the news, the school has stated that it followed Ministry of Education procedures, including attempts to contact the family and a home visit before completing the unenrollment.
So, if schools are doing what the framework asks of them, why were children like Yuna and Minu still able to disappear?
The gap beyond the school gate
The problem is what happens to that information once it leaves the school.
Removal from the roll is largely treated as an administrative step. It is not consistently treated as what it so often is. A warning sign that a child might be at risk.
There is no single, joined up, child centred process that asks:
- This child has been taken off a roll. Are they on the roll at another school
- Are they being legally and effectively educated at home
- Are they still connected with health and other services
- If we cannot answer those questions, who has clear responsibility to go and find them
At the same time, we know that school attendance in Aotearoa New Zealand has been declining for years. Before the pandemic, only around 70 percent of students attended regularly. This has since dropped further, and efforts are under way to lift regular attendance back toward 80 percent.
That means there are already many children sliding towards the margins of education. When those same children also disappear from the roll altogether, the risk to their wellbeing escalates sharply.
Right now, there is no strong, legislated safety net beyond the school to catch them.
When a child disappears, it is a safeguarding issue, not just an attendance issue
Unexplained withdrawal from school is not only about attendance. It is about safety.
Children who vanish from education can be:
- Living with unrecognised abuse or neglect
- Experiencing severe family crisis, bereavement or parental mental distress
- Being moved between countries or communities without clear plans for their schooling
- At greater risk of exploitation or other forms of harm
In the current Auckland case, there were profound stresses in the family. Yuna and Minu lost their father. Their mother was struggling with mental health and isolation. There were moves between Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas. The children then dropped out of sight of their school community.
We now know Yuna and Minu were already deceased by the time some family members and agencies were trying to find them. That hindsight is devastating. But it should prompt us to ask what would make it much harder for such a tragedy to go unnoticed.
Remembering their names matters. It reminds us that this is not simply a case to analyse, but the loss of two children whose lives should have unfolded very differently.
What needs to change in Aotearoa New Zealand
Some practical steps include:
- Treat removal from the roll as a child wellbeing trigger, not only as paperwork
When a child is taken off a roll and there is no clear destination school, this should trigger a coordinated welfare response. Education, health and social services should work together to locate the child and understand their circumstances.
- Create clear duties to track children who are not on any roll
Local services need a well-defined responsibility, and the tools, to identify and follow up children who are not enrolled anywhere. That includes better data sharing between systems, while still protecting privacy and rights.
- Build stronger attendance and safeguarding partnerships
Schools cannot do this alone. Attendance services, health providers, social services, iwi and community organisations all have roles to play. Shared training, shared protocols and shared information can help join the dots.
- Invest in safeguarding training for everyone working with children
People across the workforce need the skills and confidence to see non-attendance and unenrollment as potential safeguarding red flags and to know exactly what to do when they are worried.
- Listen to families and offer support early
Many families who fall out of the education system are under intense pressure. Poverty, housing stress, mental distress and disability all contribute. Punitive responses alone will not bring children back into safe, regular learning. Compassionate, practical support will.
A call to government
If we truly mean it when we say “never again”, then this cannot stop at sadness and shock. It has to lead to concrete action.
Central government has the power to:
- Make children who are missing from education visible in law and policy
Recognise children who are not on any school roll as a specific group of concern and require active tracking and follow up.
- Mandate a clear, cross agency response when a child is taken off a roll
When a child is unenrolled without a confirmed destination school, this should automatically trigger checks across education, health and social services, and a welfare visit if there are unanswered questions about their safety.
- Strengthen information sharing where safety is at stake
Ensure that privacy settings do not prevent agencies from joining the dots when children disappear from school at the same time as families are in obvious crisis.
- Embed regular safeguarding training across the workforce
Make child protection and safeguarding training a standard expectation for everyone working with children, so that unexplained absence and removal from the roll are recognised as serious warning signs.
- Monitor and report publicly on children who are out of education
Count these children, report on their numbers and circumstances, and hold the system accountable for bringing them back into safe, meaningful learning.
These are decisions only government can make. They are also decisions that send a clear message about whose safety matters most.
What each of us can do
System change will take time and political will, but there are things we can do now.
- If you are a teacher or school leader, treat unexplained withdrawal as a serious concern. Keep asking questions until you know that a child is safe and in education somewhere.
- If you are a professional in health, social services or community work, be curious about children you stop seeing. Ask what has changed in their schooling and everyday life.
- If you are a neighbour, whānau member or friend, notice the children around you. If you stop seeing them, especially at times of obvious family stress, it is better to speak up than to look away.
Most of all, we can decide together that no child in Aotearoa New Zealand should be able to simply disappear from school, health and community life without anyone feeling responsible for finding out if they are safe.
Yuna and Minu did not get that safety net. Our responsibility now is to build one strong enough that no other child is ever allowed to slip so far from view.
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