2. School presence

In this chapter, we report patterns of participation in school, or “presence”: attendance, participation in extracurricular activities offered by schools, taking leadership roles within schools, and the amount of time spent doing homework and views of it.

Then we summarise the results of our analyses of the interconnections of attendance with school engagement, competency levels, approach to NCEA and other factors of interest; then the interconnections of attendance with prior engagement, motivation, and competency levels (at age 14), and then with other aspects of school experience (such as student views of their classes) and experience outside school.

Attendance

We asked school management to categorise student attendance for us.² Twenty-six percent of the students were judged to have excellent attendance, 23 percent, very good attendance, and 22 percent, good attendance. Attendance was seen as fair for 15 percent, and poor for 11 percent. Three percent had had poor attendance because of illness, and 1 percent for other reasons (mainly participation in sport). Five percent of the parents said they had worked with the school on the student’s truancy.

How long would students stay at school?

Most of these Years 11 and 12 students were now committed to staying at school until the end of Year 13 (78 percent). Ten percent thought they would leave at the end of Year 12; 9 percent were unsure how long they would stay at school.

Extracurricular activities

All but 11 percent of the students took part in some extracurricular activities offered by schools. Around a third took part in one or two of the options offered, and another third, in three or four. Twenty percent had taken part in at least five options. Team sports were taken part in by just over two-thirds of the young people. Music and the arts were the other main activities offered. Project-based activities or clubs were less frequent.

Year 12 students were more likely to take part in arts performances (31 percent cf. 21 percent of Year 11 students), or leadership courses (16 percent cf. 8 percent).

Leadership and responsibility within the school

What opportunities did the young people have to take leadership roles within their school? Just under two-thirds (62 percent) had taken one of the 21 roles we asked about. Twenty-nine percent had one leadership role, 14 percent had had two, 8 percent had had three, and 11 percent four or more of these roles. The most frequent leadership roles were linked to extracurricular activities, but some students were also planning and staging school-based social events, talking at assemblies, or providing advice and support to others within the school.

Year 12 students were more likely to be coaching sports teams (18 percent cf. 11 percent of Year 11 students), providing peer support (12 percent cf. 1 percent), talking at school assemblies (15 percent cf. 7 percent), on the school council (10 percent cf. 4 percent), representing the school in inter-school leadership events (10 percent cf. 6 percent), putting together a school magazine or newspaper (4 percent cf. 1 percent), or being prefects (2 percent cf. none).

Homework

Homework hours had increased somewhat, from an average of 4.7 hours per week for the Year 10 students at age 14 to an average of five hours a week at age 16. The standard deviation (s.d.) continues to be high and, if anything, increased (s.d. 3.5 at 14; s.d. 4.05 at 16). A high standard deviation, relative to the mean, is indicative of a skewed data set, with a clump of results below the mean and a long “tail” spread out above the mean. In this case, many students were doing only a little homework, but a small number were doing a great deal (8 percent of the sample was doing 12 hours of homework or more each week).

Views on the importance of doing homework continued to decline: when the young people were 12, 49 percent thought it was very important, cf. 31 percent at age 14, and now 23 percent at age 16. Half the students did not like doing homework (a steady rise from the 40 percent at age 14, and the 32 percent at age 12). Thirty-six percent said it was hard to do their homework, and another 32 percent said it was sometimes hard to do it. Why was it hard? Views ranged from simply not wanting to do it (23 percent), and aspects of the homework: there was too much of it (9 percent), it was difficult (6 percent), it was boring (6 percent), the student didn’t understand what they had to do (4 percent), to other attractions such as sports (25 percent), friends (23 percent), TV (19 percent), as well as paid work (11 percent), music or performing arts (9 percent), tiredness (8 percent), and family or siblings (6 percent each).

What is related to attendance rates at age 16?

Attendance levels were related to measures of school performance as well as performance on our cognitive competency measures. Students with good or very good attendance records did just as well as those with excellent attendance records in terms of how many Level 1 NCEA credits³ they gained when in Year 11 or Year 12. Those with good or better attendance gained more Level 1 NCEA credits than those with fair attendance records; and many more than those with poor attendance records. The proportion of these three groups gaining 120 or more Level 1 credits was 53 percent, 36 percent, and 1 percent respectively. There were similar patterns in relation to the proportion of achievement standards gained that were at the merit or excellence levels.⁴

The patterns in cognitive competency levels at age 16 showed the same pattern: similar average levels of performance on our measures for those with good, very good, or excellent attendance, somewhat lower cognitive competency scores for the group with fair attendance, and markedly lower scores for those with poor attendance.

Student attendance levels were also related to teachers’ views of students’ overall ability, their attitudinal competency levels (including social skills), and their approach to NCEA. Teachers’ views were relatively similar for students with good, very good, or excellent attendance. They rated students with fair attendance lower than the first three attendance groups, and students with poor attendance lower again on their attitudes to work, approach to NCEA, and overall ability.

To gain further understanding of how prior and current experiences and approaches were related to attendance rates at age 16, we looked how these age-16 attendance rates were related to: a) age-14 motivation and cognitive and attitudinal competency levels; b) variables that summarised key ways of spending time from ages 8 to 14; c) how students currently felt about school, and the teaching practices they encountered in classes; and d) what was currently happening in their relationships with family and friends, their experience of the wider world, and the way they spent their time outside school.

Prior attitudes, competency levels, and experiences

Motivation and competency levels two years earlier had a bearing on current school attendance levels. Low school motivation levels at age 14⁵ were reflected in lower attendance levels at age 16: 30 percent of this group had very good or good attendance rates cf. 54 percent of those who had high school motivation at age 14. Age-14 cognitive competency levels were lower for those with poor attendance at age 16, and age-14 attitudinal competency levels were lower both for this group and for those who missed school because of ill health.

Students who had been involved in bullying in at least two of the four periods when we collected data between the ages of 8 to 14 were more likely to have only fair or poor attendance (almost half these students had been cf. almost a third of those with good or better attendance).⁶ Students with poor attendance were more likely to have been in the cluster whose out-of-school interests at age 14 were either focused on computer games, or nothing (34 percent of the poor attendance group were from this cluster, cf. 21 percent of those with fair attendance, and 18 percent of those with good or better attendance). But there were no associations between school attendance levels at age 16, and patterns of attitudes to school, reading enjoyment, or amount of time spent watching television between the ages of 8 and 14.

Current school engagement and experiences

Attendance levels were, not unsurprisingly, related to school and class engagement, and to enjoyment of classes. They were also related to the teaching practices in classes, and to satisfaction with subject mix.

Students whose attendance was good or better were more likely than those whose attendance was poor or fair to have higher levels on our engagement in school scale. This scale includes items such as enjoying learning, keeping out of trouble, liking teachers; and items that were reverse scored: being restless, bored, wanting to leave school as soon as they could. Students with good or better attendance also had higher scores than those whose attendance was fair or poor on our affirmed at school scale, whichincludes items about feeling safe, feeling that the student belongs, being treated as an individual, the fairness of school discipline and rules. They were also less likely to show disengagement in learning when we asked about three specific classes (English, their most enjoyed subject, and their least enjoyed subject). This scale includes items about the student response, such as being able to get away with not doing much work, behaving in a way to annoy the teacher, as well as items about the learning environment, such as the class getting interrupted and the repetition of work without learning anything new.

Students with good or better attendance also had higher scores on our positive learning environment scale, which includes items relating to teaching practices that give students clear understandings of the work, meaningful feedback on their work, are pitched to students’ particular needs, and which give students an active role in their learning. They also had higher scores on our scale, satisfied with subject mix (which asked about both student and parent satisfaction with the current year’s subjects, and how well these subjects would help the student to do the subjects they wanted to do the following year).

Current relationships and experiences outside school

There were some marked differences here. Students with excellent attendance were least likely to have experienced adverse events in their life over the past year,⁷ to have risky behaviour, ⁸ and friends with risky behaviour,⁹ and their parents gave them a higher rating for their levels of responsibility. At the other end of the attendance scale, we see the reverse: poor levels of school attendance showed most association with experiences of adverse events and experiences related to risk.

Poor school attendance was not associated with greater difficulties in family life,¹⁰ or parental perceptions of their child’s self-confidence and self-efficacy. This suggests that some students’ families were not concerned with their school attendance levels. It also suggests that for some students, high levels of self-confidence and self-efficacy allow them to take risks that can undercut them making the most of school: that it’s the uses to which these personal skills and understandings are put that matter for young people’s learning and wellbeing as much as their levels.

Implications

Age-16 students whose school attendance was reported as poor or only fair showed signs of distancing themselves from school some time earlier: their motivation levels at age 14 had been lower, as had been their (teacher-reported) average attitudinal competency levels. They may have struggled with the work of school, if their lower average cognitive competency levels meant they found it harder than others to do the work, or make progress. Higher involvement in bullying between the ages of 8 to 14 also suggests a turning away from the work of school that began some time earlier as well. Turning away from school for many in this group was not associated with pursuing different paths of learning, but rather continuing patterns from the past: such as those who had been in the age-14 cluster of having few interests, or only computer games; and spending time in pushing boundaries, through risky behaviour, and with friends who offered opportunities for risky behaviour. There were also some in this group who were coping, or probably not coping, with more than their share of adverse events over the past year.

But while we see previous learning identities and habits playing a part in steering students away from school, we also see that experiences of different teaching practices and being able to take subjects that appeal and lead on to the future also play a part. Students who reported positive learning environments and satisfaction with subject mix were much more likely to attend school regularly.

Good or better school attendance was associated with gaining NCEA credits, and with teachers’ perceptions of how well students were approaching their work for the NCEA. That, and the patterns showing low school attendance being associated with experiences that were not likely to provide positive learning alternatives, underpin the importance of the current policy emphasis on reducing truancy. Improving the attendance of those with poor or only fair attendance is more important than aiming to have all students always attending school, since there was little difference between those with good, very good, or excellent attendance in terms of their engagement with school, or approach to the NCEA.

Footnotes

2. In previous years we had asked for actual attendance records, but because there was no common way of recording attendance (some schools recorded absence, some attendance; some recorded whole days, some half days), it was difficult to be sure we were grouping like with like.
3. The attendance record for students in Year 11 at the time the data were gathered was for the same year as they took Level 1 of the NCEA. For students who were in Year 12, the attendance record was for the year after they took most of their Level 1 NCEA courses.
4. The strength of the relationship between attendance and NCEA achievement is shown in the next chapter.
5. We found three “school motivation” clusters at age 14; their make-up from a number of items is described in Appendix 1. Those with low motivation levels were in this cluster: “aiming for skilled/unskilled jobs; low conviction about gains from school”; those with medium motivation levels in the cluster “less positive of gains from school and less sure of future goals” (than those with high motivation levels), and those with high motivation levels had “a university/professional orientation, and high faith in gains from school”.
6. Thirty-six percent of the students reported some involvement in bullying (as bully, victim, or both) at two or more of the four times we interviewed them between ages 8 to 14. Thirty-five percent reported some involvement in bullying at one of the four times of interview. Thirty percent reported no involvement in bullying on all four occasions.
7. The “adverse events” scale variable includes items about having unwanted sex, death of a friend, an accident or injury, shifting to another home, family break-up, and health problems. Full details are in Appendix 1.
8. The “risky behaviour” scale variables includes items such as getting into a physical fight, having sex, having to lie about something someone else did, doing something they regretted while drunk; and the frequency of these over the past 12 months.
9. The “friends with risky behaviour” scale variable includes items such as my friends smoke marijuana, my friends get into trouble, my friends think it is ok to have unsafe sex, when my friends and I party we like to drink alcohol, with the young people asked to give their level of agreement with these statements.
10. The “family pressure” scale variable includes the young person’s sense that one or other parent was trying to control them, expected too much from them, worried too much about them, or had problems of their own. Details are in Appendix 1.