In Term 1 this year, 62 percent or more than 5000 students did not attend regularly (three in five).
Education Minister Jan Tinetti yesterday said rapid action taken by the Government to improve attendance was working.
“The Government responded quickly to address low attendance rates following the Covid pandemic, by implementing new attendance officers and a $40m programme to back local solutions led by schools and their communities.
“Regular school attendance is moving in the right direction which is exactly what we need to be seeing. Term 1 this year saw regular attendance improve to 59.5 percent (nationally) an increase of almost 10 percent from the end of the previous year.”
The Government’s Regional Response Fund has invested more than $200,000 in Gisborne to tackle truancy.
“There has been a mixture of school-led, Kāhui Ako-led, iwi-led and business-led initiatives, ranging from creating a role within the school, to being the connector between school and home,” Hautū Te Tai Whenua (Central) Deputy Secretary Jocelyn Mikaere said.
“Most of the new initiatives we have funded have been going for less than six months. We are currently undertaking a review, seeking feedback from those who have received Regional Response Funding.”
National Party East Coast candidate Dana Kirkpatrick said she was appalled at the results for Gisborne.
“We all know that one of the best economic indicators is how many of our kids are in school and we also know that if you cannot read and write and do basic maths then life is going to be tougher.
“Education is the pathway to the future. It is the thing that helps us to help ourselves and we just simply need to do better at it.
“In Gisborne there are 8162 students across the schools and yet only 3099 are recorded as going to school regularly. That is an appalling result for our community. How will we ever break the cycles of intergenerational deprivation in this community if our children are not at school?
‘Quite shocked’ at latest stats for attendance
“The teachers cannot do any more than they are doing under difficult circumstances and the failure to address truancy will be a very difficult trend to turn around quickly. In February, Labour announced it would employ 82 truancy officers and three months later only one was in the job.
“National has a plan for this — we will hold schools and parents accountable for ensuring that kids are regularly in school.
“We will power up community-based truancy services, who know their people and can connect families to the support they need.
“We will set schools targets and hold principals accountable for achieving these targets.
“Schools will have attendance targets. Interventions will occur when they aren’t.
“We will use the full suite of tools, from warnings, fines and prosecution, to get our kids back in school.”
Despite the figures, at least one Gisborne school is bucking the trend.
Kaiti School principal Billie-Jean Potaka-Ayton said teachers there were “quite shocked” that the region was at 38 percent for regular attendance.
“We don’t have issues at our kura with attendance. Today is a wet day which can affect our attendance. We were going to have cross country today which means we sometimes have an influx of kids away because of the big run, but no, today we are on 89 percent. We sit around the 85 -90 percent range in winter and are in the 90s in summer.
“Every day, we track and talk about our attendance rate; it’s communicated in our panui each week as well.”
