“If the truancy crisis isn’t addressed, there will be an 80-year-long shadow of people who missed out on education when they were young, are less able to work, less able to participate in society, more likely to be on benefits. That’s how serious this is,” Seymour said in a statement.
In April, the Government set a target requiring 80% of students to be present for more than 90% of term time by 2030. It also released new health guidelines and an online database to track weekly attendance rates. Schools will be required to report daily attendance data next year.
Regular attendance v daily attendance
Not all numbers are equal. Seymour noted term three saw an improved daily attendance rate of 83.9%. To meet the 2030 “regular attendance” target of 80%, schools would need to reach a daily attendance rate of more than 94%.
“Daily attendance” refers to the percentage of enrolled students marked as present on the roll each day for four hours or more.
In contrast, “regular attendance” requires students to be at school 90% of the time. Regular attendance is placed at the top of a scale that precedes “irregular absence” (80-90%), then “moderate absence” (70-80%), and “chronic absence” (less than 70%).
The “regular attendance” rate for term two was 53.1%, compared to 47.1% last year. The rate was 59.7% in 2021, 64.2% in 2020, and 57.7% in 2019.
As an aside, I don’t understand why the measure of success is lifting the “regular attendance” rate, which is a high bar at best, and not the “chronically absent” rate. It’s a case of same, same, but different.
Truancy crisis or measurement crisis?
The “daily attendance rate” is where it gets juicy.
For example, the “daily attendance” rate for term four last year was 86.6%. In theory, the remaining 13.4% of absences seems high, but 6.8% of those were justified.
Notably, schools are tasked with defining what is and isn’t justified. In term four, 2023, for example, short-term illness or medical reasons were the most common reasons for absence, accounting for 39% of all justified absences.
Meanwhile, the remaining 6.6% of absences were marked as “unjustified”. The lowest unjustified absence rate was in term two, 2012, at 3.1%. In pre-pandemic 2019, the rate ranged from 3.5% to 5.4%.
It’s confusing, sure, but it means the number of students who form the basis of the “truancy crisis” is just 6.6% in today’s terms.
So what’s all the fuss about?
For the 6.6% of “unjustified absences”, parents can be prosecuted and fined between $30 and $3000 under the Education and Training Act.
The burden of proof falls on parents to prove their case, and if they fall short, fines are paid to school boards.
Earlier this year, Ministry of Education operations and integration leader Sean Teddy said the ministry’s role in prosecutions was to support school boards, when requested, “with guidance on the prosecution process and, in some instances, [to] reimburse the school’s legal costs”.
Between 2020 and 2024, the Ministry of Education made one reimbursement, Teddy said.
Proceedings may be private, and school boards are responsible for deciding whether to take legal action against parents, which perhaps explains why cases appear to be few and far between.
Prosecution a matter of last resort
For example, in a 2017 case, a parent unsuccessfully defended two charges after their two children hadn’t attended school on 12 and 14 occasions during a six-month period. Additional absences were retracted upon receipt of medical certificates during cross-examination.
The parent claimed the children had suffered illnesses while family dynamics and housing difficulties contributed to the absences. When the children did attend school, they were late, the judgment read.
In his oral judgment, now-retired Judge Geoff Rea said school and local authorities had done a tremendous amount to get the children to school, and prosecution was a “matter of last resort”.
Notably, Judge Rea said although the parent was found guilty, they avoided a monetary penalty for fear it would be “counter-productive”.
Ultimately, schools face an oxymoron of sorts. It’s in a school’s interest to get kids through the door, yet pursuing legal action could alienate parents – the very people required to complete the heavy lifting.
There’s also the issue of socioeconomic deprivation. Ministry of Education data shows “regular attendance” rates are higher for schools where students face fewer socioeconomic barriers. For example, using an equity index, disadvantaged schools had a “regular attendance” rate of 33.4% in the final quarter of 2023, compared to 65.6% of affluent schools.
Where to from here?
The Government is now gearing up to release information about a new traffic light system that hopefully means we won’t be seeing more parents in court.
Better yet, it would be great to see a system that moves away from the confusing “regular attendance” metric to measures that address the 6.6% of students falling through the cracks.
In the meantime, let’s hope the new data requirements mean schools aren’t incentivised to compel chronic absentees to quit school in order to deliver improved results.
