Attendance Data Services
This is the main index page for attendance data. From here you can access data on attendance and analysis based on the data.
Page Contents:
Release schedule for termly attendance data
The expected dates for the release of attendance reports and data for the different terms are shown in the table below. More products are released for Term 2 data, requiring additional time for development and review.
Term | Release date | Next release |
---|---|---|
Term 1 | Released by end of Term 2 | 2024 data - 5 July 2024 |
Term 2 | Released by second Thursday of November | 2024 data - 14 November 2024 |
Term 3 | Released by end of Term 4 | 2024 data - 20 December 2024 |
Term 4 | Released by end of Term 1 the following year | 2023 data - 12 April 2024 |
Key Findings: Data, Statistics and Publications
Statistics
Data released here are high-level aggregate views to support the Ministry’s reporting on the volumes of students returning back to early childhood services and schools during COVID-19.
Attendance[webpage]
Attendance under COVID-19[webpage]
Publications
Significant monitoring publications are produced each year. These tend to focus on a specific education sector, priority population group, and/or an education strategy related to one of these sectors or groups. Key measures such as student attendance rates are used in these publications.
Why is the Ministry collecting this data?
Attendance data are core information required for monitoring the schooling system. The Ministry collects attendance data from school Student Management Systems on both a weekly and termly basis.
The Ministry uses attendance data:
- to monitor truancy patterns to support policy development
- to support implementation and monitoring of interventions
- to support a transparent and open system through public reporting
Attendance data is also used for general research and statistics, in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020. This may include linking attendance data with other student data, for example, for research on the correlation between student attendance and NCEA achievement. Care is taken that no individual can ever be identified from published analysis.
The Measures
The key measure of attendance is the proportion of students who attend regularly, that is, the percentage of students who have attended more than 90% of half-days. A half-day can either be the minimum two hours before, or after, noon contributing to the minimum four hours of a school day.
The Data Source
Historically our data collection for attendance was a weeklong paper-based survey, this subsequently moved to the electronic collection of data. Since 2011, all state and state integrated schools in New Zealand have been invited to submit Term 2 attendance data. Schools entering attendance records into their Student Management Systems (SMS) were asked to provide an extract of this data electronically. From 2020 schools have been asked to provide attendance data for each term.
The electronic files supplied by schools contain detailed attendance records. Each half-day's attendance or non-attendance is then reported.
Collecting and processing termly attendance data
When the collection first started schools provided data to the Ministry via data collection forms. Now schools use the electronic attendance register (eAR) from their Student Management System (SMS) to create and send electronic attendance files. Instructions on this process are available.
The information collected from schools as part of attendance data collection via SMS is SMS Student ID, National Student Number (NSN), gender, current year level, ethnicity, student type, attendance dates and attendance codes.
- Attendance Codes 2023 [PDF 185kB]
The following are the key steps in the collection, processing, and release of termly attendance reports and data:
- Data collection and processing
Each term needs to be complete before the data can be submitted by schools. Schools cannot be contacted to submit, query or correct attendance data until the following term begins. Three weeks is allowed at the beginning of each term to reach acceptable response rates and for the collection to be closed.
Every Day Matters summary reports are sent to each school immediately following the successful submission of their attendance data.
Once collection closes an initial suite of products is prepared for quality assurance and to support analysis.
- Quality assurance
Quality assurance and initial analysis cannot commence until the initial products have been produced. Additional time has been required over recent terms to understand unusual situations arising from COVID and its impacts. Processes may need to be adjusted and/or repeated to implement solutions.
- Data analysis and creation of products for Education Counts
Data analysis is undertaken. This sometimes requires detailed bespoke analyses to understand features of the data.
During this period products are prepared. Datasets are produced, spreadsheets are updated and reports written for release on Education Counts. Every Day Matters reports are produced for schools. All documents and products are carefully quality assured.
- Review and approval
Internal review and approval processes are followed. Before the Ministry releases the data publicly we provide it to the Minister for their information only under the no surprises principle, given significant public interest.
Some products are uploaded to internal databases to allow embargoed use by our regional staff, supporting their engagements with schools.