Photo: 123RF
Regular school attendance has continued to improve in term two this year.
Just over 58 percent of students attended more than 90 percent of their classes.
The figure was the highest term two result since attendance reached an all-time low of 40 percent in term two, 2022.
Though it was an improvement on those last three years and five percentage points higher than the 2024 result, it was still lower than term two in every other year on record apart from 2019, when regular attendance was 57 percent.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour said every region recorded an increase in attendance.
Attendance rates in term two compared across 2019, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Photo: Education Counts
"Taranaki, Whanganui, and Manawatū in the central North Island recorded the biggest improvement, of 7.2 percentage points over the same term last year," he said.
"There is also improvement at the other end of the scale. Chronic absence has declined from 9.6 percent last year and 12.5 percent in the same term in 2023 to 9.3 percent this year. Often children with complex needs are chronically absent, and it's great to see these figures continue to improve."
The second term tended to have the lowest regular attendance rates of the four school terms, and illness continued to be the main reason for student absence.
The government wanted 80 percent of children attending regularly by 2030.
In schools facing the most socio-economic barriers, regular attendance averaged 39 percent in term two compared with 70 percent in schools facing the fewest barriers.
In Tai Tokerau, 48 percent of school children were regular attenders while in central and east Auckland the figure was 65 percent.
Among Māori and Pacific children, regular attendance in term two was 44 percent, compared with 70 percent for Asian children and 60 percent for Pākehā/European.
Seymour told RNZ the improvement was partly due to a change of attitude to attendance among families.
"We had a couple of years of saying stay home, save lives, sub-text 'education's not really that important'. Now we have a government that gets up every day and says going to school is the most important thing you can do for your future," he said.
Seymour said the government had also increased funding to the attendance service, started publishing attendance data daily, and issued new health guidance.
He said the Education Ministry had issued a clear signal it would prosecute people who did not get their children to school, though it had not yet brought any cases to court.
"They've made it very clear to schools, if you've got someone who's ... not a can't, but a 'won't go to school', then we're open to prosecuting them," he said.
Seymour said he understood the ministry had looked into 15 cases and it was "a matter of time" before one came to court.
He said the numbers were worth celebrating because the improvement since 2024 was significant and he was confident that would continue.
"Next year, every school by law will have an attendance action plan, [we'll] be rolling out the STAR, the Stepped Attendance Response scheme. So we're going have a a strategy for every child at every level of attendance," Seymour said.
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