Extreme flooding is being blamed for a territory's reduced school attendance rates as an education minister defends her government's tough anti-truancy policy, including fines for parents.
Northern Territory minister Jo Hersey was grilled by opposition members in an estimates hearing on Tuesday, over what evidence she could provide to show the tough approach was working.
The education department's school attendance officers have the power to issue parents with compliance notices if students fail to attend school for 20 days or more.
Continuing non-compliance can lead to parents being fined or put on income management programs.
For term one in 2026 the school attendance rate across the NT was 75.4 per cent, compared to term one in 2025 when it was 76.1 per cent.
The attendance rate for Indigenous students in term one in 2026 was 57 per cent compared to term one in 2025 when it was 59.2 per cent.
Non-Aboriginal student rates were 87 per cent in 2026 and 87.4 per cent in 2025.
Ms Hersey flagged extreme weather events in early 2026 as a key cause of the slump as she defended her government's tough line.
"There were areas around the territory where there was flooding or we had cyclones when we saw many children, in Katherine for example, did not go to school for a considerable amount of time," she said.
The territory felt the impact of tropical cyclones Fina and Narelle and other heavy-rain events that raised river levels and flooded communities across several months in late 2025 and early 2026.
Opposition Leader Selina Uibo questioned the minister's claim that school attendance was down due to seven extreme weather events.
"If you are looking at the whole picture the explanation of the seven weather events does not account for all of the decreases across the Northern Territory," she said.
NT Education Department Deputy Chief Executive Paul van Holsteyn told the committee the impacts of the weather events on attendance should not be characterised as small, with some schools significantly affected.
The committee heard that the latest yearly figures showed 1395 compliance notices were issued for truancy along with 61 fines, set at $378 for adults, while 36 families were being income managed.
Ms Hersey made no apologies for the tough-on-truancy approach, saying it was against the law for parents not to send their children to school.
The NT government had made a conscious effort to get school attendance and engagement officers out into communities to work with families to get their children back into school, she said.
"We want to get these children into jobs and being productive members of our community and helping rebuild our economy."
