Seventeen schools received funding from the scheme. (File photo) Photo: 123RF
Data-matching found little evidence of success from a fund which gave schools $10-million a year to tackle truancy.
The then-Labour government set up the Regional Response Fund in mid-2022 as a four-year, $40m initiative to support school-driven initiatives to deal with poor attendance and the current government ended it in this year's Budget.
A Ministry of Education report on the fund said schools reported moderate and even high improvements in attendance from initiatives paid for with the extra money.
But it found little evidence of improved attendance when it used national student numbers to monitor changes in attendance among students targeted by the scheme at 17 schools.
"For the most part we see no real change in mean year on year attendance of the selected cohorts from before and after the RRF funding, or, where there is change, this change likely reflects the higher-level change in the national average.
"The one possible exception is one school cohort that may be worth continued review, as the data indicates that average attendance for the selected cohort has started to improve in 2024," the report said.
The 17 schools received amounts ranging from $1000 to $17,000 and used them for initiatives including a kapa haka attendance programme, 10-week attendance and engagement projects, and a walking bus and breakfast club.
However, the report also said the fund's support was short-term and schools said they needed long-term commitments to improve attendance.
"Short-term funding cycles created challenges in sustaining successful interventions," it said.
The report concluded the fund had improved attendance with 74 percent of schools that responded to a survey saying it had a high or very high benefit for participating students and 64 percent reporting increased attendance.
"Numerous reports from RRF recipients in the RRF survey responses have indicated positive outcomes and benefits to student engagement and attendance resulting from RRF initiatives.
"This was further evidenced through in-depth reports from case study participants," it said.
One group of schools said: "We have seen a huge shift in the engagement of our Pacifica learners - at the start of the year, 24.7 percent of our Pasifika learners were chronically absent, and now only 11.03 percent of our Pasifika learners are chronically absent".
The report said the accounts of positive outcomes were valid, but the ministry was "unable to validate the extent of increase to attendance rates against individual initiatives funded through the RRF and as a result cannot make judgements on attribution or causation".
The report said the fund was a high-trust programme aimed at supporting locally-led and responsive initiatives.
They included hiring staff to visit families at home, running community events to build a sense of school community, and paying for specialists like counsellors, social workesr and nurses.
Some schools used the funding to help familes find financial or social and health support, and to drive students to school.
In its first year, the fund supported 432 projects in 738 schools, and in its second year 450 projects in 842 schools.
The ministry's evaluation was undertaken in 2024 and covered projects run in the first two years of the fund.
The report said schools' initiatives were tackling "complex barriers" to school attendance and achievement such as disconnection from school and unmet wellbeing and learning support needs.
It said the fund's support was short-term so schools tended not to use the money for the most chronic truants.
"RRF recipients noted that they wanted to avoid letting vulnerable students and families down, because the RRF was short-term funding and could not support the kind of relational commitment that is required to address the underlying issues effectively," it said.
"Furthermore, funding recipients expressed that tackling chronic absence requires building relationships and trust over time, and sustained investment to allow for initiatives to embed and overcome any early implementation improvements."
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