It's a Numbers Game

Thursday, 13th March 2025 at 7:50am

As you may have seen in the media, one of the government’s major targets in education is to improve the learning of children in New Zealand by improving school attendance (The government’s targets in charts: RNZ). Their intention is to have increased regular attendance in school to maximise children’s opportunity for learning.

That’s fine, but what do they mean by regular attendance? How much, how often, how long?
As we have communicated before, Green Bay High School uses the Ministry of Education’s “Stepped Attendance Response” to address absence concerns and encourage and support regular attendance at school. The tag line that the government uses is “Every Day Matters” - and indeed it does.

The government’s target - the minimum attendance rate for “regular attendance” - is 90%. In terms of school days that equates to being in school at least nine days out of every ten. If a student misses six days from school in a term - for whatever reason - that would take their attendance to below 90%, and so below “regular attendance” for the reporting figures.

90% attendance is a minimum to aim for.

• Even being absent 10%of the time throughout their schooling would mean a child misses so much. A Year Ten student would have missed the equivalent of a whole year of school.
• Taking just one day off per fortnight means missing 25 hours of teaching in a term.
• For senior students that would be 80 hours of NCEA teaching missed across the school year.
• 80 NCEA hours behind where they could have been.
• And if a student were to pay privately to make this time up then the cost jumps into the thousands of dollars very quickly.

If a student missed a day per week their attendance would be 80% - a concerning drop of 20% from what is possible. Missing a fifth of their schooling. Missing two whole years of school by Year Ten. Lower attendance has an impact upon academic understanding and results at each stage, level and grade, whether it be junior or senior, Level One or Three, struggling for a pass or pushing for an excellence grade, being in school gives greater chance of success.

And every little improvement helps: punctuality too has its impact. Just being five minutes late to school adds up very quickly and can be the same time missed as three days across a year. Fifteen minutes of missed time at the start of lessons adds up to two whole school weeks of learning that is lost.

The government’s numbers are clear with regard to the link between school attendance and positive educational and social outcomes. We remain very appreciative of families and their help in enabling our students to get to school each and every day. 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.