Budget 2022: School attendance, truancy focus of $88 million funding package and strategy

Education Minister Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A high school principal warns of intergenerational impacts from rising rates of children missing school – some to support their parents who lost their jobs – and increased learning difficulties from the pandemic.

On Sunday Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced a $88 million package to tackle school attendance issues, particularly due to Covid-19 impacts.

Hipkins said the funding, to come out of Budget 2022, would focus on supporting initiatives that work for local communities to deal with engagement and attendance.

A regional response fund of $40m over four years was being established to meet local education needs. This followed a $50m Urgent Response Fund last year to support learners affected by the Covid-19 lockdowns.

The package also included $11.2m for a positive behaviour and learning programme and $7.75m specifically for Māori and Pasifika communities, where there are large discrepancies.

Hipkins and Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti made the announcement at Porirua College.

Principal Ragne Maxwell said attendance issues existed before the pandemic had increased greatly.

She spoke of the “Covid generation”, including students at her school who’d either reduced attendance or stopped coming entirely as they had to support their families through the lockdown due to job losses.

It particularly impacted the older students, in their critical NCEA years.

“They are working, filling shelves until midnight, then drifting in at about 11 or 12 trying to do a few hours work before they’ve got to get back to start their shift at four.

Related articles

“This is happening now.”

Many students too had been greatly impacted by the changes to at-home learning, with limited access to technology and quiet space.

“That is impacting our young people, who were expected to get university entrance last year and did not get it.”

Maxwell said this would impact not only their current education but job prospects and further entrench inequality.

“We’re already dealing with intergenerational alienation from education with many of our communities.”

Porirua College had instituted its own programmes to address attendance, which would be supported by today’s funding announcement.

Attendance achievement officer Mose Skipworth, a former Porirua College student himself, said the key was to be able to get out and engage with the families of students.

Skipworth said extra funding and resources would help, but a more holistic approach was needed to assist with food, housing and even transport issues.

“Some of the students are in emergency housing, and it can be really disruptive. Some have ended up [living] in Wellington, and so have to get the train and then a bus here.

“So we try to help out with transport where we can too.”

Porirua attendance achievement officer Mose Skipworth said the key was to be able to get engage with the families of students. Photo / Michael Neilson

Data for term 2 of last year shows over 40 per cent of students not going to school regularly – attending 90 per cent of the time by half days – an increase of 10 percentage points since 2015, with huge disparities for Māori and Pacific children and lower-income households.

Data also shows children disconnected from the school system are taking longer to get back in the classroom.

Since 2017 the average number of days it took to re-engage non-enrolled students increased from 85.6 to 113.9 last year.

It also showed the 20 longest times had all increased substantially since 2015, the peak year for regular attendance over the past decade, from 741 days to 1914 days in 2021.

There had been a steady increase in non-enrolled students since 2015, from 7223 to 9076 in 2017 and 10141 in 2021 (this was a small decrease from 2020, largely affected by lockdowns).

It comes as the latest data for regular attendance, for term 2 last year, remains about 60 per cent – a 10 percentage point drop from 2015, and similar to 2019.

Ministry of Education research shows each additional half-day of absence is associated with a reduction in the number of NCEA credits students subsequently attain.

Last year Parliament’s education committee launched an inquiry into truancy issues, with resource issues emerging in Attendance Services, and published its final report in March.

The inquiry found attendance levels for New Zealand students far lower than in Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

A 2018 international survey found 29 per cent of students here reported skipping school on at least one day, compared with the OECD average of 21 per cent.

In Aotearoa, Māori and Pacific children saw the greatest declines in regular attendance since 2015, of 12.3 and 15.8 per cent respectively, versus 10 per cent for Pākehā and 7.7 per cent for Asian students.

In term 2 of 2021, 44.4 per cent of Māori and 44.8 per cent of Pacific students attended school regularly.

While there were declines across all deciles, regular attendance among the poorest students, decile one, declined nearly 17 percentage points since 2015 to 40.9 per cent, while those in decile 10 dropped just over five points to 71.7 per cent.

There had also been a steady increase in students chronically absent (attending 70 per cent or less of available school days) from 4.6 per cent in 2015 to a peak of 8.7 per cent in 2020, and down to 7.7 per cent last year.

Hipkins said attendance rates were a “complex issue” that also needed to be addressed through social and economic policies.

Tinetti said the funding would help with localised approaches to attendance issues.

National party education spokeswoman Erica Stanford said the impact of disengagement in school was being seen wider in communities.

“From stolen cars to ram raids and brazen thefts by children as young as nine.

“Covid-19 was always going to mean that our most vulnerable students were at a high risk of becoming disengaged with the education system.

“The Government knew this and yet did nothing over the last two years to target our most vulnerable students and their families, and we’re now seeing the consequences of that failure. Today’s announcement is two years too late.”

$88m student attendance pre-Budget package announcement:

• A regional response fund of $40m over four years, provided through Te Mahau, to meet local education needs, with an initial focus on ensuring students are going to school and are engaged in learning.

• $18.9m to fund a refresh and enhancement of Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L), including $11.2m to deliver 14 new School-Wide practitioners and $7.7m to expand Check & Connect: Te Hononga and Te Mana Tikitiki.

• $7.8m to address cost pressures in the Incredible Years programmes.

• $6m to help address current Attendance Service cost pressures and allow providers to increase capacity to support schools.

• $15.5m to scale up Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu support for at-risk young people to reengage in school, in line with its proven ‘Big Picture’ approach, supporting around 2500 at-risk students annually.