The legacy of the Hipkins/Tinetti Education Leadership

Labour delayed the release of the Term 2 attendance data until after the election. It came out yesterday.

Some low-lights:

• Only 47% of students came to school regularly in term 2 this year. an improvement on the same term last year, but one of the worst figures on record.

• 12.5% of students were chronically absent in term 2, meaning they had attended 70% of less of their classes.

• The figures were a slump from term 1 this year when 59.5% of pupils reached the regular attendance benchmark of attending more than 90% of their classes.

• In term 2 this year only a third of Māori and Pacific students attended school regularly, compared to half of Pākehā students and 59% of Asian students.

• The Tai Tokerau region had the lowest percentage of students attending regularly (32.8%),” the report said.

• Unjustified absences reached 6.1% of class time, the highest term 2 figure on record.

The first thing the new Minister can do towards this is make the submission of attendance by schools compulsory and require each school to publish their Wednesday to Wednesday – every Friday on their web-site. Make is a local community problem to see school quality and parental involvement/responsibility increase.

Alwyn Poole
Innovative Education Consultants
www.innovativeeducation.co.nz
www.alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/