There’s a clear connection between going to school regularly and doing well in the classroom. Higher levels of educational achievement can mean better health, higher incomes, better job stability, and more participation in communities. This all makes society stronger and more connected.
Students aged 6 to 16 years old (and enrolled 5-year-olds) are required to attend school every day. It’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure children attend and engage in learning from when they first start school.
It’s important for schools and kura, parents and whānau, iwi, hapū, communities, and government agencies to work together to support and make sure students are attending school regularly. Regular attendance means the student is present for more than 90% of the term.
To increase regular attendance rates, the Government has set a target: by 2030, 80% of students are present for more than 90% of the term.
Attendance action plan
The Associate Minister of Education has announced an action plan for attendance. The plan is an evolving set of initiatives that work together and support existing efforts to lift school attendance.
Recent initiatives include:
- introducing a Stepped Attendance Response to guide school actions for each level of absence
- strengthening accountability of school boards
- enabling information-sharing to support multi-agency attendance support
- a public awareness campaign on the importance of school attendance
- launching an attendance dashboard and regular reporting of daily attendance figures so we all know the number of students attending each day and keep focused on increasing regular attendance
- sharing with schools and parents refreshed health guidance to support good decisions about school attendance.
We will provide updates on further actions as decisions are made.
Minister's release on the attendance action plan - Beehive website
Approach to improving attendance in schoolsQuarterly progress report
The progress report for the quarter ending June 2024 shows:
- reaching the attendance target is feasible
- there was a slight term-on-term increase in attendance from Term 1 2023 to 2024.
Government targets – Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC)
