Attendance under COVID-19

A high level summary of the weekly attendance data from early learning centres and schools during COVID-19.

The Ministry needs to keep the National Crisis Monitoring Centre, the Government and the public informed about how many children are learning onsite in early learning services and schools during the COVID-19 period. This information is being used for managing the response to the crisis, reporting on the effectiveness of that response, and informing the return to normal operation.

The Ministry originally established a daily data request for schools and early learning services to provide information on attendance, as an interim solution. It then moved to a weekly collection of attendance data from school student management systems and the early learning information system (ELI). What is measured is the percentage of children present at responding schools and early learning services, out of the number of children enrolled at those schools and early learning services, for each day of the week.

The metric for the attendance rate for responding early learning services has changed beginning with attendance reported for the week 12 to 16 October 2020. The new metric is children present at responding ECE services as a proportion of the number of children expected to attend those services. This has changed from children present as a proportion of children enrolled (from the ECE Census, June 2019), for responding ECE services.