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With most schools back in action, student attendance rates are once again in the spotlight. One Auckland school is even buying its own van to help transport chronically absent students to and from school.
Provisional figures from the Ministry of Education show the number of students turning up to school regularly has improved. In term 4 of last year, 57.3 percent of students attended school more than 90 percent of the time. This was up from 56.4 percent in term 4 the previous year.
The government has set a goal to have that regular student attendance rate at 80 percent by the end of 2030. But a breakdown of the data show despite the upward overall trend, Māori and Pacific student attendance continued to lag significantly.
In term 4 of 2025, just 39.5 percent of Pasifika students and 43 percent of Māori students attended school regularly. The rates were 41 percent and 42.5 percent, respectively, for term 4 of the previous year.
Bert Iosia is the principal of Auckland’s Kelston Intermediate School. He has a school roll of about 420 students, most of whom are Pasifika and Māori.
For the past few years, the school’s regular attendance rate has sat around 52 percent.
While that “wasn’t great” Iosia told Checkpoint, the school had managed to have “some success” with students who were “at the chronic end of being absent from school”.
More plans were in place to ramp up that work and engagement, he said, including the purchase of a van dedicated to transporting students identified as “serious concern” because they’d missed 15 days or more of school.
“Where we know the background story and we understand what’s on top of the whānau – it becomes challenging for them to get kids there – this van could be a little bit of a lifeline to pick the kids up and get them through.”
The school van was due to be up-and-running by the end of the month.
Iosia, who is also the president of the NZ Pasifika Principals’ Association, said it was difficult to pinpoint the exact causes of lower attendance rates among Pacific and Māori.
“There’s lots of issues that go on for our whānau that are almost difficult for non-Māori and Pasifika to sort of understand.
“Within our communities, there are just families that are just doing it hard.
“They may need some of the little ones to sort of help out with baby, new bubba – that’s sort of popped up as well.”
Anxiety for students also contributed to absenteeism, he said.
“Intermediate is quite an interesting space because it’s a two-year period. So transitioning into intermediate can be quite challenging for some of our anxious kids.”
Anxiety was also a problem for students leaving and moving onto high school, Iosia said.
“The movement to high school can be quite daunting. So especially come the end of the year … you can see some of that absence that sort of sits around our children of serious concern.”
Iosia said increasing attendance rates required ongoing engagement and connection with students and families.
He said the school year had started well. The school had also set an ambitious goal of getting 70 percent of students attending regularly – or more than 90 percent of the time – by the end of the year.
“My board, and my attendance team, and staff – we’re pretty committed to that.”
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