Every Day Matters Data Services

Some frequently asked questions about the Every Day Matters reports.

Last updated: June 2025

Every Day Matters report FAQ

What is the Every Day Matters (EDM) report?

Every Day Matters is a termly report that highlights attendance patterns in your school and provides actionable insights to improve student attendance. The report includes your school’s Regular Attendance for the term, an overview of the reasons given for absence, insightful trends and next steps.

What improvements are included in the updated version of the report?

Following feedback from a sample of schools and Ministry regional staff, a simpler, more user-friendly design was introduced in Term 1 of 2024 to make it easier to read and interpret your attendance data. A revised summary section provides your school’s Regular Attendance for the term, a breakdown of attendance by Student Attendance Category, the top five reasons for absence, and the highest and lowest performing days and weeks of the term.

How is my attendance data calculated?

We calculate whether each student has enough time in presence codes in the day to be counted as having two half-days present, one half-day present, or none.  A half day is two hours. Where a student has more than 90% of half-days present, they are counted as a regular attendee.

The following rules are used to determine whether a student is counted in our statistics:

  • must have a minimum number of days of attendance data recorded (20% of the term)
  • be a regular student, international fee paying  student or exchange student

If a student has overlapping attendance data between two schools, they are counted with the school they are enrolled at in ENROL.

Because these statistics and reports are generated across all schools every term, this is a standardised and automated process.

Why is my data different to the reporting provided by my SMS?

Your attendance statistics in your EDM report are based on when your data was submitted to the Ministry. This is typically at the end of the term and will not account for any recent updates or amendments that may have been made in your SMS.

The section above also provides other information about how we calculate attendance statistics, and this may differ from the way your SMS calculates attendance.

If you have questions about differences between your EDM and your SMS please contact EveryDayMatters@education.govt.nz.

Why does my on-time attendance statistic look so different to what is reported in our SMS?

We calculate on-time attendance as the time allocated to non-late present codes over the total time allocated to all present codes for that term for each student. The percentage reported is the proportion of students who are on-time for more than 98% of their classes.

How your SMS calculates this may differ from this approach.

How is the Unknown Reason (?) Attendance Code now treated in the EDM report?

If there were significant numbers of unknown reason codes (‘?’) in your attendance data, these were previously excluded from your EDM Report. In the updated EDM Reports we now include all the ‘?’ codes to highlight incomplete attendance data and encourage you to follow up and not leave ‘?’ codes for a significant amount of time. A reminder that ‘?’ codes contribute to Unjustified Absences.

Can I get comparisons added to the EDM Report?

National and regional comparators are publicly available after the public release of the Regular Attendance statistics on Education Counts. The release dates are published in the release schedule.

Why have I received a report with no attendance data or attendance data missing?

This will be because the attendance files from your SMS for a particular term contain no recorded attendance data, or because your school has changed SMS recently and conflicting data is being received from both SMSs. Please contact your SMS provider for support.

Why haven’t I received an EDM report?

We have set certain conditions to generate an EDM report. These are in place to ensure that your file has high enough data quality to be usable for analysis and reporting.

It is essential that:

  • You include an NSN for every student.
  • You enter an attendance code for every period for every student.
  • You ensure that when you modify a timetable around special events that the timetable is updated correctly.

If you receive a Data Quality report, you can use this to correct the issues in your data and submit a ‘corrections’ file manually via your SMS at any time. If you require an amended EDM report, let us know via EveryDayMatters@education.govt.nz

Where can I request more help or information?

If you have any questions about this report, or need further assistance, please get in touch with your local Ministry office or email the Schooling Data Team: EveryDayMatters@education.govt.nz

Data quality reports for EDM attendance data FAQ

What are the data quality reports?

Schools receive a Data Quality report from the Ministry when the attendance data received does not meet the minimum criteria to generate an Every Day Matters report. We have minimum criteria in place to ensure that each school’s attendance data is of sufficient quality to be used for analysis and reporting.

What does this report tell me?

The tabs in this report highlight issues that need to be resolved before we create your Every Day Matters report, and also identify issues that won’t affect the creation of your report, but appear unusual and might merit you checking. For ease of checking, issues are categorised in separate tabs by issue type and display the NSNs of students affected and the date on which the issue was identified.

What data quality issues can prevent the creation of our EDM reports?

There are three errors that prevent Every Day Matters reports from being generated:

  • VR-L-01 – Invalid NSN
  • VR-D-04 - Day Length Error
  • VR-P-01 - Invalid attendance code

Your Data Quality report will list the affected NSN and how many instances of the error have occurred, and on what dates they occurred. The exception to this is instances of VR-L-01 where the error is that the student has no NSN - a Student Number will also be provided where possible.

What do I need to do now?

Please ensure these identified errors are resolved in order for us to generate your Every Day Matters report. Once you have made these changes:

  • If these are in response to a fortnightly data quality report, your corrections will be picked up in your daily attendance file the next day
  • If these are in response to a termly data quality report, please submit a ‘corrections’ file via your SMS for the dates of the term. If you require an amended EDM report, let us know via everydaymatters@education.govt.nz

How do I know which students in our system have no NSN?

Your SMS will have assigned a unique ID, called a Student Number (different to the NSN), to all students in your data. This Student Number is included in your report where available to assist in you looking up the student.

What does the Day Length Error mean? There’s just a ‘1’ next to a student on a day.

The Day Length Error comes when a student in your data has over 450 minutes (or 7.5 hours) of attendance recorded for one school day. This error is common in Composite schools where some students will have multiple timetables set up to record their attendance in both Primary school-run classes and Secondary school-run classes, which when combined will double count any overlapping time where a student has been recorded in both classes.

This can also occur if an alternative timetable has been set up for an event where a non-standard attendance timetable has been recorded but the regular timetable has not been removed or disabled.

This will be a result of your Student Management System combining both timetables when your attendance data was submitted. The ‘1’ highlights that the error exists on the given date.

If these are valid attendance codes for valid periods, how do we fix these Day Length Errors?

In instances where a student has more than one timetable, your SMS should have a way to disable or exclude a particular timetable from the submitted data. Please consult your SMS provider on how to do this.

What does the ‘Duration must be a positive integer’ error mean?

This error has occurred because a period in a student’s timetable is recorded as 0 minutes or lower. All periods of recorded attendance should be greater than 0 minutes. Break periods such as Interval or Lunch break should not be included in attendance reporting as they do not contribute to a student’s attendance rate.

What about all the other errors listed in the report?

The other errors listed in your report:

  • VR-L-02 - The same NSN may not appear more than once in a submission
  • VR-L-04 - Year levels in your data that are outside the expected range for your school/Kura (for example, outside of years 1-8 for a Full Primary Years 1-8 school).
  • VR-L-05 - Student must be recorded as enrolled at the school on the date(s) of attendance
  • VR-L-09 - A student has an invalid or missing ethnicity code
  • VR-L-13 - A student must have at least one day with attendance data
  • VR-D-08 - Total number of periods for a day must be greater than or equal to 2 and less than or equal to 10 (ignore if the school was closed for a half day or a student was only timetabled for a half day)

These errors will not prevent the creation of your Every Day Matters report, but we have included them in your report as we have identified the data as unusual and wish to make you aware in case your data was recorded incorrectly.

Where can I request more help or information?

If you have any questions about this report, or need further assistance, please get in touch with your local Ministry office or email the Schooling Data Team: EveryDayMatters@education.govt.nz