Time spent by school students on justified absences in New Zealand

This data uses total response Ethnicity; students who identified in more than one ethnic group have been counted in each ethnic group, but only once in "All". Ethnic groups should not be summed as this could lead to double counting of some students.

Students attending regularly: having attended more than 90% of all school time in Term 2, where time is measured in half-days.
Lateness: The percentage of classes for which students were marked as arriving late, out of the classes they attended. School policy will determine when a student is
recorded as arriving late to class (e.g. more than 10 minutes late).
Being present at school: it does not include justified nor unjustified absence from school. It does include classes where a student is at school for the day but needs to attend an in school or out of school appointment or is on a school organised outing.
Justified and unjustified absences: absences with explanations that have been deemed satisfactory or unsatisfactory, respectively. School principals are required to make a judgement as to which explanations they will accept, based on school policy. These policies may vary slightly and could lead to small differences in data between schools.

Detailed attendance records are required for the analysis performed in this report, therefore only schools that can provide attendance data electronically are able to participate in this analysis. In earlier years, there were more schools that could not provide electronic extracts of their attendance data, and these schools were typically smaller primary schools. Therefore, the data in this analysis has become more representative over time, as more schools are able to provide this data.

Being present at school does not include justifiable (nor unjustifiable) absence from school but does include classes where a student is at school attending an appointment or on a school organized outing.

From 2023 the Ministry has begun to allow for gender values other than male and female. It will also take time to build an accurate picture of the population of students recording a non-binary gender because students’ details are generally only updated when they first enrol at school or when they change schools. As collection of this data is limited, the two additional gender categories are combined in a single ‘Another / Not stated’ category.

Due to the unusual circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the data reflects different circumstances than in previous years. In 2020 Term 2 was 12 weeks long, during the first 5 weeks all students. were engaged in home learning. Attendance data were therefore only collected for the last 7 weeks of Term 2.

At URL provided, download 'Regular attendance data 2019-2025 Term 2' file under 'Regular attendance time series data (2019 Term 1 to 2025 Term 3)' headline.

Regular attendance at school, measures the percentage of students who have attended more than 90% of the term, Historically attendance data were collected for Term 2, however, from 2019 attendance data have been collected for each term.

Attendance is linked to both student wellbeing and to attainment.
Student wellbeing is a key priority of the education system. Studies confirm that attending school regularly predicts the best outcomes for wellbeing on average. The Ministry found that reports by 15-year-old students of skipping a greater number of days in the previous fortnight of school predicted worse average outcomes relating to schoolwork-related anxiety, sense of belonging, bullying, racism and motivation,
Attendance is also linked to student attainment in secondary students.