Attendance rates at the school were in the mid-nineties. If there was a disparity between Maori and non-Maori attendance, it was only slight, Mr Gordon said. The attendance officer knew which students were prone to missing school and targeted them.
Mr Gordon said students had to give up their lunchtime each time they missed class. The punishment had a profound impact on some students who decided it wasn't worth it.
However, he said the main reasons for student absences were legitimate such as illness.
Sometimes a family would have the opportunity to go overseas and he accepted that was a form of learning.
Students might also have sports tournaments or a tangi to attend during school time.
Sometime students were asked to mind younger siblings, which might mean leaving class early to pick up a sibling from school. That had been addressed by allowing students from the local primary school to come to the high school to play until the end of the high school day.
Nationally, 69.4 per cent of students attended school regularly last year.Attendance was worst among Maori students, with 56.7 per cent attending regularly.
Figures showed 77.1 per cent of students at decile 10 schools attended more than 90 per cent of the time. That compared to 57.2 per cent of students at decile one schools.
Deciles are a measure of the socio-economic position of a school's student community. Decile one schools have the highest proportion of students from low socio-economic communities.