The Government will redesign the Attendance Service and set "ambitious" school attendance targets to try and improve New Zealand's dire truancy rates. 

A new attendance strategy is being launched by Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti this afternoon at Manurewa Intermediate School in South Auckland. 

The strategy aims to see 70 per cent of school students at school regularly by 2024 and 75 per cent by 2026. 

Fewer than 60 per cent of students currently attend regularly, defined as being at school at least nine days each fortnight. 

And almost 8 per cent of students are chronically absent, meaning they miss at least three days of school each fortnight. The strategy aims to cut that number to 5 per cent by 2024 and 3 per cent by 2026. 

By 2026 schools will also be expected to notify families of every absence on the day it happens, and to take action after five days of absence in a given term. 

School attendance has been steadily declining since 2015 and has been made worse by Covid. The fall has been across every decile, year level, ethnicity and region, with the biggest drop among primary and intermediate kids. 

Complex factors have been blamed, from poverty and family violence through to an uninspiring curriculum and bullying at school. 

More than 40 per cent of school students are not attending school regularly - defined as at least nine days per fortnight. Photo / Thinkstock 

The Government says all those factors need addressing to get kids back in the classroom; and once they're there, they need to be learning, rather than being in class but unengaged. 

Illness has been a major contributor during the pandemic but unjustified absences have also been increasing. Every day of absence – whether justified or not – is linked to worse educational outcomes. 

The new Attendance and Engagement Strategy outlines 13 actions intended to turn things around, including: 

- A public awareness campaign highlighting parents' responsibility for getting kids to school
- Setting clear expectations for schools to prioritise attendance|
- Redesigning the Attendance Service to bring it closer to schools
- Looking at whether more frontline roles, including attendance officers, are needed
- A review of whether current regulatory settings "[incentivise] whānau and caregivers to meet their responsibilities"

The strategy was released in response to a truancy inquiry by the Education and Workforce select committee. 

Many submitters to that inquiry blamed the 2013 centralisation of the Attendance Service for increasing truancy rates. Principals have called for truancy services to be better funded and returned to local control. 

They hope that will be part of the redesign of the service, which will look at trials in Kawerau and South Auckland as well as recommendations from the inquiry. Changes will be brought in from January 2023. 

The strategy also pointed to other work that's already being started, including changes to the Learning Support Delivery Model, strengthening the national curriculum, and targeted support for schools to reengage students following the pandemic. 

- by Dubby Henry, NZ Herald