Overview of Transient Students

Around 2,400 students were recognised as transient during the 2020 year. Māori students and students who attend low decile 1 and 2 schools were more likely to be transient than other groups.

Due to the unusual  circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, students learnt from home when the COVID-19 alert level was at Level 3 or Level 4.  Based on the statistics in the transience data, there is no evidence to suggest that COVID has had an adverse effect on transience in 2020.

Figure 1: Transient rate has been declining since 2016

For more information on transient students see the indicator report.

Time SeriesUpdated: Aug-2021

This spreadsheet provides numbers and rates of transient students for a range of dimensions (such as region, decile, ethnicity) across time in a simple, easy to use format.

Transient Students Technical Notes

Students need stability in their schooling in order to experience continuity, belonging and support so that they stay interested and engaged in learning.

All schools face the constant challenge of ensuring that students feel they belong and are encouraged to participate at school. When students arrive at a school part-way through a term or school year, having been at another school with different routines, this challenge may become greater.

Students have better outcomes if they do not move school frequently. There is good evidence that student transience has a negative impact on student outcomes, both in New Zealand and overseas.  Research suggests that students who move home or school frequently are more likely to underachieve in formal education when compared with students that have a more stable school life. A recent study found that school movement had an even stronger effect on educational success than residential movement.

There is also evidence that transience can have negative effects on student behaviour, and on short term social and health experiences.

The Measures

Interpretation Issues

Transience has only been examined for the period 1^st March to 30^st November.

Children who started school part way through the measurement period were counted in this indicator, both in the denominator and, if they had two or more moves during the period, the numerator of the rate. Starting school for the first time did not count towards the school moves for these children

Age is taken as the age that a student was as at the 1^st of March. Those children that were under 5 years old at that date are not included in analyses by age. Since students tend to start school when they turn 5-years-old rather than at the beginning of a school year, these students starting school later in the year have had less time within the measurement period to move schools, resulting in incomparable data.

For school-based measures (Decile, Regional Council, Territorial Authority), students are counted once for each category for which they attended. For example, in a given year between March and November if a student attends a Decile 7 school in Auckland, then a Decile 7 school in Waikato, then a Decile 6 school in Waikato; this student is counted once each in the categories for Decile 6, Decile 7, Auckland and Waikato.

Home-schooling is counted as a school for the purposes of this indicator, though is generally only included under totals when examining geographically related variables.

Total Response Ethnicity

This indicator uses total response ethnicity for reporting. Total response ethnicity is when people who have been identified in more than one ethnic group have been counted in each ethnic group. For the New Zealand total each student is counted only once. Total response ethnicity has been used for all analysis in this indicator.

For this indicator European/Pākehā refers to people who affiliate as New Zealand European, Other European or European (not further defined). For example, this includes and is not limited to people who consider themselves as Australian (excluding Australian Aborigines), British and Irish, American, Spanish, and Ukrainian.