Students change schools multiple times

Northland has the highest rate of student transience in the country, with hundreds of pupils moving schools multiple times each year.

Kaitaia College principal Jack Saxon said more than half the students who had arrived there since the beginning of the school year had come from Auckland or the surrounding area. In many cases, they had moved north because they hadn't fitted into the Auckland or central North Island school systems.

Ministry of Education figures show Northland had 508 transient students last year, or 17.5 per 1000 students. That's the highest of any region in the country, compared to a national average of 4.9 per 1000 students.

The rate of transience - defined as students who transferred schools twice or more during the period of March 1 to November 1 - has stayed the same in Northland for the past three years.

"Predominantly, those students are coming here with, I would say, fairly robust behavioural track records," Mr Saxon said. "There is an element of this transient population ... students that are not at the moment being supported or fitting into educational institutions throughout the country."

However, there were also outstanding students among the transient roll, he said.

Mr Saxon said Kaitaia College worked to support the transition by partnering with whanau, checking in with the students, giving them a mentor, and making sure they were connected to social groupings.

In many cases the students have moved around a lot so their ability to establish and maintain social relationships can be an issue, he said. Transient students might feel they had been failed or people didn't care about them.

"Breaking through that stigma and through that perception is always difficult and having them understand that we're really invested, no matter what it takes, to keep them in the school and to support them to achieve."

Mr Saxon said there were also learning challenges, including issues relating to literacy and numeracy levels.

"If you don't address it when they come in, there is an element that you could be setting them up for failure."

Mr Saxon said there wasn't much mid-year transience among students from within Northland. However, he'd had a big influx of Northland students at the beginning of the school year. They were predominantly senior students coming to the school for its flexible and diverse curriculum.

Nearly 3800 students were recognised as transient last year nationally. The ministry noted the national rate was smaller than regional rates because those students could be counted in more than one region.

Maori were the ethnic group with the highest levels of student transience and there had been consistently higher rates of female students.

Generally the number of transient students decreased as decile increased, the figures showed.