A New Zealand high school Principal is under fire after telling students they are more likely to become rape victims if they wag school.

A student at Hamilton’s Fraser High School secretly recorded the speech, delivered by Principal Virginia Crawford, where she outlined the bleak futures that laid ahead for those who chose to skip school, reports Yahoo 7.

“Every student who walks out of the gate to truant is already a statistic of the worst kind,” Ms Crawford can be heard telling the junior students at an assembly on Thursday.

“[They are] highly likely to go to prison, to commit domestic violence or be a victim of domestic violence, be illiterate, be a rape victim, be a suicide victim, be unemployed for the majority of their lives, have a major health problem or problems, die at an early age, have an addiction – drugs, gambling, alcohol or smoking.

“The more you truant the more likely you are to end up as one or most of those statistics.

“I don’t want you to be one of those statistics.”

She told the students, “When I drive out of school during class time for meetings, and I see groups of students sitting outside the dairy, fish and chip shop, bus stop, some of the things I am thinking is that is another group of students without a future.

“That is another student who will end up as a statistic, that’s another loser, that’s another wannabe. Another student desperate for friendship, another we’ve lost.”

She urged students to put in the effort at school to make a better life for themselves.

“You and I know the only way to fix this is to do the mahi now, to do the work now. School is not easy, but it is a lot easier than having no hope and being cast aside without any worthwhile future.”

The secret recording was uploaded online, with one mother condemning the “disturbing” speech, saying she would be pulling her daughter from the school until the principal was replaced.

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