Speaking this afternoon at the launch of a new attendance strategy, Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti said the Government had decided "enough is enough" and it needed to turn things around. Video / NZ Herald
The Government will redesign the Attendance Service and set what it calls "ambitious" school attendance targets to try and improve New Zealand's dire truancy rates.
School attendance has been steadily declining since 2015 and has been made worse by Covid. The fall has been across every decile, year level, ethnicity and region, with the biggest drop among primary and intermediate kids.
Complex factors have been blamed, from poverty and family violence through to an uninspiring curriculum and bullying at school.
Speaking this afternoon at the launch of a new attendance strategy, Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti said the Government had decided "enough is enough" and it needed to turn things around.
Tinetti was speaking at Manurewa Intermediate School in South Auckland, a decile 1 school that boasts some of the highest attendance rates in the country. Over 90 per cent of its students attend regularly, defined as being at school at least 9 days out of 10 each fortnight.
Across New Zealand fewer than 60 per cent of students currently attend regularly. The new target is for 70 per cent of students to be regularly attending by 2024 and 75 per cent by 2026.
Chronic absence - missing at least three days per fortnight - has also been rising, with almost 8 per cent of students now chronically absent. The strategy aims to cut that number to 5 per cent by 2024 and 3 per cent by 2026.
By 2026 schools will also be expected to notify families of every absence on the day it happens, and to take further action after five days of absence in a given term.
More than 40 per cent of school students are not attending school regularly - defined as at least nine days per fortnight. Photo / Thinkstock
Illness has been a major contributor during the pandemic but unjustified absences have also been increasing. Every day of absence - whether justified or not - is linked to worse educational outcomes.
The Government says there are many factors that need addressing to get kids back in the classroom; and once they're there, they need to be engaged to learn.
Manurewa Intermediate principal Iain Taylor said there were many difficult issues students faced, but they should not be used as an excuse for non-attendance.
It was up to schools to become a place kids wanted to be and to engage with whānau, who he said cared deeply about their children and wanted them to attend school.
She said the fall in attendance was "really complex, and it looks different as to why that's happening across the whole of the country ... but we've actually said enough is enough and we need to turn that around".
"Coming to school gives you a great education ... that means you've got fantastic choices in your life to be the very best that you can be."
• Redesigning the Attendance Service to bring it closer to schools, with changes from January 2023
• Looking at whether more frontline roles, including attendance officers, are needed
• A review of whether current regulatory settings "[incentivise] whānau and caregivers to meet their responsibilities"
• Redesigning the alternative education service
The strategy also pointed to other work underway, including changes to learning support, strengthening the national curriculum, and targeted support for schools to re-engage students following the pandemic.
Last year a truancy inquiry was carried out by the Education and Workforce select committee, prompted by National's then-education spokesman Paul Goldsmith. The Government has adopted the targets recommended by the committee.
Tinetti said the targets had to be "aspirational but also ... realistic". Seventy per cent was the rate of regular attendance back in 2015 before the slide began, but it should only be a first step.
"I know from being a former principal that when there are targets you will move toward reaching them."
She also did not want the targets to become punitive for schools or families. Instead, the Ministry of Education would help support schools that were struggling.
One of the first steps was a campaign, beginning soon, for parents to understand the importance of education in kids' development.
"In my time in education, I cannot think of any parents who didn't want the best for their children. They just have to understand what their part in it is to get their young people here."
Many submitters to the inquiry said the 2013 centralisation of the Attendance Service had made it harder to re-engage students. Principals have called for truancy services to be better funded and returned to local control, with more local officers who know the communities they serve.
Tinetti said local responses worked best and she did not want a "cookie-cutter" solution imposed from the top. But as part of that local response, schools might decide to band together to employ an attendance officer, or a bigger school might employ one on their own.
