Every Day Matters

Friday, 7th March 2025 at 7:30am

This week we are going to give the newsletter’s attendance slot to the Ministry of Education, the Education Review Office and RNZ News to look at a variety of aspects of the attendance issue.

The national government’s push for higher attendance is drawn together under the heading “Every Day Matters”: each opportunity to be in school is one that should be taken to maximise learning opportunities, both in the purely academic and the pro-social sense. Here is a link to their “Increasing School Attendance” page. The government has produced a series of initiatives to lift school attendance and thus achievement and life opportunities for young people. We will be rolling out the “Stepped Attendance Response” for those students and families that need extra help in attending more often.

Being in school on time is tremendously important. Every minute of every lesson, every day is an opportunity for learning. Every day or lesson missed has a detrimental impact on student success - whether it be moving from 95% to 90% attendance, or from 55% to 50% the time missed matters. Whilst missing only one day a fortnight may seem manageable, it is in fact 10% of a programme that is missed. And puts a child below the figure that the government uses for denoting ‘regular attendance’.

The Education Review Office (ERO) produced a report (“Left Behind”) looking at those for whom school attendance is severely problematic.

“Chronic absence has doubled in the last decade. In Term 2 this year, over 80,000 students missed more than three weeks of school. These chronically absent students (at school 70 percent or less of the time) are often struggling and are at high risk of poor education and lifetime outcomes.”

Here is a link to this ERO report on dealing with “chronic absence”.

Now obviously a child can get sick and need some time away from school. One of the toughest parental questions is, “Should I allow my child to take a day off school?”.

It will always be a case by case situation. Having said every day in school matters, how do we manage the very real need to support individual and community health needs when a child is sick. Here is a recent article that looks at this very issue.

As ever with attendance, it is important that we work together. If there are issues or concerns over your child's absence from school please get in touch with their year level dean. If your child is going to be late to school, or absent for the day due to illness etc, please contact the school via the Parent Portal, by email at [email protected], or by phone 817 8173 ext 234.

Chris Woodward ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL