Home
Help for Boards
Student Achievement and Attendance
Student Attendance
An introduction to student attendance

An introduction to student attendance

Students who regularly attend school are more likely to succeed in learning, develop critical social skills, and stay engaged in education.

With support from boards, parents, school leadership, and the Ministry of Education, we can encourage students to attend school regularly.

It’s the whole community’s responsibility to ensure students attend school.

School boards have an essential role in ensuring that the school environment is inclusive and meets the needs of all students, so they want to attend.

Keep reading to learn more.

Why does attending every day matter?

Every day at school matters because consistent attendance is crucial for academic success, social development, and future well-being.

Missing school, even for short periods, can negatively impact a student’s learning progress and long-term outcomes.

This is why the Government has prioritised student attendance.

Having access to accurate, timely, and consistent attendance data helps students, parents, whānau, schools, kura, communities, and government agencies understand attendance trends and challenges.

This data also supports your board in making informed decisions to improve student attendance and, therefore, improve educational outcomes.

Why are some students struggling to attend school regularly?

The Ministry of Education has identified a range of interrelated reasons for New Zealand’s overall decline in regular school attendance.

Out-of-school factors include:

  • Health and mental health issues

  • Lack of resources for transport, food, or school-related materials

  • Disruptions in the family or low parental expectations

  • Community or system-level factors like housing and poverty. 

In-school factors include:

  • Bullying and discrimination

  • Poor teacher-student or teacher-parent relationships

  • Relaxed attitudes towards attendance in the school

  • Curriculum is not sufficiently engaging or culturally responsive. 

What is the Government doing to support student attendance?

Regular attendance dropped to an all-time low of 40% in 2022.

In response, the Government has set a target of 80% of students to be present for more than 90% of the term by 2030.

To achieve this, the Ministry of Education has implemented an attendance action planopen_in_new.

The plan is an evolving set of initiatives that work together and support existing efforts to lift school attendance.

This includes ensuring all schools and kura are:

  • Consistently recording and reporting daily attendance

  • Applying the legislative requirements

  • Improving the availability of resources to support chronically absent or unenrolled students.

You can view the Daily attendance – Education Countsopen_in_new dashboard to see an overview of student attendance in your region.

What is your board’s role?

Under the Education and Training Act 2020, every child aged 6 to 16 (and 5-year-olds enrolled in school) must attend school every day that it is open.

To support this requirement, the Act requires boards to “take all reasonable steps to ensure that the school's students attend the school when it is open.”

It also requires boards to have an attendance management plan that is publicly available online.

While the principal and staff handle the day-to-day management of attendance, your board is responsible for:

  • Setting clear expectations in policy and having an attendance management plan.
  • Ensuring the school meets its legal duties, including having your attendance management plan available to the public on your school’s website.
  • Ensuring systems are in place to track, report, and support student attendance through appropriate school resourcing, based on the Stepped attendance response (STAR) frameworkopen_in_new.
  • Ensuring the school is an emotionally and physically safe environment for all students and staff, is inclusive of and caters for students with differing needs.

You can read more about attendance management plans in our Attendance Management Plans (AMP) article.

What information should you be receiving?

To perform its job effectively, your board requires regular reports from the principal on student attendance.

This includes information on:

  • Overall attendance rates

  • How the school is implementing your board’s policies and the attendance management plan

  • Reasons and trends relating to absences (justified or unjustified)

  • What is being done to support students with concerning attendance

These reports should break down attendance by year group, ethnicity, and any other relevant factors.

This helps your board identify trends and patterns and decide where resourcing may be needed.

The principal should also advise what the school is doing to improve attendance, such as providing additional support for families or using pastoral care programs.

In cases where attendance is a concern, the principal should explain how the school works with these students, their families, external support agencies, and attendance services to develop and implement plans that address any identified barriers.

Remember that any reporting must be done in a manner that protects the identity of the individuals concerned.

How can you improve your attendance rates?

If your board is concerned about low attendance rates, work with your principal to understand why and determine what can be done to address it.

Some things your board can do:

  • Promote the benefits of regular attendance with your community.

  • Consult the community about attendance to identify issues, potential barriers, and actions that could improve attendance.

  • Ensure adequate support and resourcing for programmes that help remove barriers to attendance, such as bullying prevention initiatives, counselling and mental health services, and support for those facing financial challenges.

Questions your board could ask

  • Are we aware of our legal responsibility to take all reasonable steps to ensure students attend school when it is open?

  • Do we have policies and practices in place to monitor and support student attendance?

  • Do we have a current attendance management plan that is publicly available on the school’s website?

  • Does the school have systems in place that align with the STAR (Stepped Attendance Response) framework?

  • Do we receive regular, well-analysed attendance reports from the principal?

  • What strategies is the school implementing to improve attendance, and how effective are they?

  • How does the school engage with students, families, and external agencies when attendance is a concern?

  • What resourcing do staff need to improve attendance rates?

  • How are we promoting the importance of regular attendance with our community?

Templates, resources, and references

Click on the link(s) below to access this topic’s templates, resources, and references.

Depending on your device, these may download or open in a separate browser.

Links from us
Ministry of Education 
Education Counts

Education and Training Act 2020 

Other legislation