Why are so many New Zealand kids skipping school?

The latest truancy report card is out. In term four of last year, 50.6 percent of students were regularly attending class.

The good news? It’s not quite as bad as the term before, up 4.6 percentage points. But the bad news is on average across 2022, less than half of our tamariki (45.6 percent) were attending school regularly.

The truth is our national attendance data has looked grim for a while and it left me wondering - is attendance as bad as it looks, or is something fudging the numbers?

On Sunday this week we investigated the reasons why kids are out of class and asked experts how big of a problem it really is.

James Cook High School Principal, Grant McMillan, says our truancy problem is bordering on a national crisis.

“Truancy is a thief. It steals opportunities, and it takes away futures.”

Agencies tasked with getting kids back to school, like Bluelight, say they simply can’t keep up with the growing numbers of truant kids referred to them.

The Government has admitted our attendance is well below where it should be, with Minister Jan Tinetti going so far as to tell me it’s her “number one goal” as Education Minister to lift attendance. The goal is 75 percent of students regularly attending school by 2026.

It’s easy to assume Covid-19 is responsible for this problem, but the data shows that while it has badly disrupted attendance, we had lower attendance rates than other countries even before the pandemic. Attendance has been dropping significantly since 2015.

It’s not just irregular attendance. In my interview with the Education Minister, she revealed approximately 9,000 children across the country missing from the education system altogether – a number that’s almost doubled in the past year.

Here’s a look at the research we’ve collected on school attendance in Aotearoa New Zealand.

A student who is regularly attending misses less than one week of school across a term. This means they’re attending more than 90 percent of the time.

It may seem like a high bar, but students who miss a week each term will have missed out on a whole year of schooling by the time they’re 16.

The Government’s wants 70 percent of students regularly attending school by 2024 and 75 percent by 2026.

Attendance has been falling since 2015. This drop was evident before the Covid-19 pandemic which suggests there is a systemic issue, rather than a one-off driver.

The latest data shows 50.6 percent of students met the criteria for regular attendance at schools and kura.

Te Tai Tokerau had the lowest regular attendance rate (38.9 percent). Otago, Southland had the highest regular attendance rate (56.6 percent).

We use the same 90 percent metric as Australia, Canada, and the UK. Our attendance rates were lower than those countries pre-pandemic and we continue to lag behind them.

Yes. As our regular attendance rates have declined chronic absences have climbed.

A student who is chronically absent misses three weeks or more across a term. This means they’re attending 70 percent of school or less.

The Government wants to reduce the number of students in this category and has set a goal of 3 percent chronic absence by 2026.

Our attendance data also captures “irregularly absent” students, who miss 1-2 weeks a term, and “moderately absent” students who miss 2-3 weeks a term.

There are two categories of absences: justified and unjustified. The latest data reveals both are up.

In term 4 of 2022, justified absences made up 7.2 percent of the time. The largest contributor to justified absences was short-term illness (5.5 percent).

Interestingly, unjustified absences also made up 7.2 percent of the time. It’s a jump of 1.9 percentage points on the year before.

Students who are recorded as learning at home are counted as present.

Holidays during the school term are classed as unjustifiable absence. A parent's note does not count as justification. The latest data shows holiday absences accounted for 1.1 percent of the time.

Declining attendance is seen across all school types and all ethnicities. The drop has been steepest in low-decile schools, and for Māori and Pacific learners.

The Ministry of Education points to the main driver of absence in 2022 as “medical reasons” but that doesn’t explain the declining rates over the past seven years.

Studies have shown the attitudes of parents to schooling plays a major role.

A 2022 ERO report found 41 percent of parents were comfortable with their child missing a week or more of school a term, or almost a year of their total schooling life.

They found a third of parents would take a child out of school for a holiday of a week or more, or to participate in a sporting event.

Nearly half of parents would keep their child out of school for mental health challenges and more than a third would keep their child out of school to avoid bullying.

Māori and Pacific parents are more likely to keep their child out of school due to bullying, illness and mental health challenges.

The evidence is clear: every day of school matters. School attendance is considered the most crucial part of a quality education and missing school leads to lower achievement.

Attendance is also linked to wellbeing with studies confirming that attending school regularly predicts the best outcomes for wellbeing on average. 

A report in 2020 by the Ministry of Education noted the first 1.5 days of justified absence is the only ‘safe’ level of non-attendance (where there is a minimal impact on a student’s attainment) that they could find evidence for.

When students reach NCEA, attendance seems to become more significant to achievement – even at the top end of attendance.

Data shows students with 100 percent attendance have NCEA achievement that is higher than students with 90 percent attendance by an average of 13 to 15 credits.

Perhaps one of the most concerning parts of truancy is the future of children who are missing from the education system altogether.

If a child in Aotearoa New Zealand misses more than 20 consecutive days of school without an accepted reason, the school is required to unenroll them.

The number of non-enrolled kids has nearly doubled over the past year to a staggering 9000 children.

Once they are non-enrolled organisations like Bluelight try to track them down and get them back into education. But the sheer numbers of children being referred to the organisation is causing a backlog.

In South Auckland alone, there are 700 non-enrolled children on a waitlist to be visited.

Bluelight’s Chief Operating Officer, Brendon Crompton, says “there are no good outcomes” for kids who aren’t going to school.

“[They’re] more likely to live in poverty, more likely to be unemployed, more likely to have mental health issues, more likely to be a young mum, and more likely to offend”.