Kia ora for dropping in and becoming involved.
Regular attendance at school is important for our children’s learning, wellbeing and their futures.
School attendance data has shown a marked decline since 2015.
Not only are children missing out on important learning they need, but they miss out on friendship, connections, and fun moments.
But together we’re changing that.
This website has some information and other resources you may need to get ‘All in for Learning’. We need everybody to play a part in helping lift attendance and engagement in learning for all our children.
Our Attendance and Engagement Strategy sets out our expectations for children attending school regularly. It also sets out 13 priority actions that we believe will make the biggest difference to attendance.
As a community, we all have a role to play to support our tamariki to be present, participating and progressing in learning.
Together with schools, work towards the 2026 attendance targets by:
Our initial focus is on four priorities:
Understanding regular attendance levels is a useful gauge for how ākonga are participating in learning. It helps schools and the Ministry of Education direct resources and support to where they are most needed.
How we think about attendance - four categories:
A child who is regularly attending misses less than one week of school time across a term.
A child who is irregularly absent misses 1-2 weeks of school across a term.
A child who is moderately absent misses 2-3 weeks of school across a term.
A child who is chronically absent misses three weeks or more of school across a term.
Term 2 2022 attendance figures show:
We surveyed New Zealand about attendance and our research results found ākonga not regularly attending school is only a top-of-the-mind concern for five per cent of New Zealanders.
Research report from Research New Zealand (June 2022)
Research report from Tātou and Rutherford Consulting (July 2022)
In Aotearoa, all children under 16 years of age are required to attend a registered school every day, unless they have a justified reason within their school’s policy for being absent, such as sickness or attending a funeral or tangi.
We know there is a direct correlation between regular attendance and NCEA achievement. (Source: He Whakaaro Report: Relationship between attendance and attainment, 2020). A Year 11 student who attends school every day has about a 90% chance of achieving NCEA Level 1, but this drops to a 1-in-5 chance if they only attend school half of the time.
But that’s not all. Schools are the hub of any community and are places where our children and young people learn – find out what they are interested in, learn more about who they are or who they want to be, their communities, our histories, different cultures, and the wider world. It’s also where many people meet their life-long friends.