New Zealand National Party Leader Christopher Luxon said COVID-19 was no longer a sufficient reason to explain the country’s truancy crisis.
Regular attendance is defined as an attendance rate of over 90 percent, where a minimum of four hours is counted as one day present.
This decrease in attendance was seen across the board, regardless of year level, ethnic group, and socio-economic background.
Rates of chronic absence (less than 70 percent attendance) were highest among Maori and Pacific ethnic groups, and students in Year 13, the final year of high school, had the lowest percentage of regular attendance by year level.
A major reason for increases in absence were families keeping their children home for illness or medical reasons, coinciding with the winter illness season and COVID-19.
However, Luxon said figures from overseas indicate the pandemic is being used as an excuse in New Zealand.
Minister Says Situation Improving, Time for Parents to Do Their Part
According to Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti, the unusually low attendance rates was partly due to families isolating during the peak of the Omicron wave.Declining school attendance is a trend that started in 2015 and accelerated during the pandemic.
But Tinetti said she was confident the Ministry’s strategy to improve attendance that was announced in June was turning the situation around.
Tinetti said it was now time for parents to “reset” their mentality.
“Yes, people have been at home and there’s been a disruption over the last three years, and totally understand how tough that’s been,” she said.
“But its time to get your children back to school.”
However, Tinetti disagreed with the suggestion, saying it had been tried in the past and failed.
“It’s a really simplistic solution to a really complex problem ... the evidence shows it doesn’t work,” she said.