Ngā mihi nui kia koutou katoa, greetings to you all.

It was wonderful to see so many parents and whānau attending our cross country event on Tuesday, despite the very chilly weather. It is always an event we enjoy because we see so many examples of ākonga taking on challenges, doing their very best, showing resilience, and showing friendship and support to each other, right down to running hand in hand to help each other along.

A huge well done to all of our place getters, and to the top five runners in each year group and gender bracket who will have the opportunity to go onto the next level and represent Amesbury School in either Junior Invitational Cross Country (Year 1-3) or Northern Zone Cross Country (Year 4-6). Please see our Share and Celebrate article in this digest for more information about our place getters.

School attendance

There has been a lot of coverage in the media over the last few weeks about the focus on school attendance. There is now a dashboard where we can access daily attendance figures on a weekly basis. You can access the dashboard here. This interactive dashboard will be updated every Monday and will show a national average of how many students are at school on any given day. Visitors can filter by region or day to understand shifts in attendance over time.

The Government has set a target of 80% of students achieving ‘regular attendance’ at school, which means attending school 90%+ of the time.

Ministry of Education attendance guidelines:

• 90-100% attendance level = regular attendance

• 80 - 90% attendance level = irregular attendance

• 70 - 80% attendance level = moderate absence

• Below 70% attendance level = chronic absence

Amesbury School attendance

While it is useful to explore national attendance rates, of most use to us is our specific school attendance data, letting us know key information about how our ākonga are tracking in school attendance.

Click on this link to our School attendance for Term 1 2024 compared with Term 1 2023 and previous years

Overall, our attendance has improved from Term 1 2023. The Government has set an aspirational daily attendance rate of 94%, meaning they want all schools to have 94%+ of students attending school each day. In Term 1 2023 we did not reach this target, but in term 1 this year we had an average daily attendance rate of 95%, which is pleasing.

It is important to note that a key area we need to significantly improve is the percentage of students whose attendance is below 80%. In Term 1 2024 this was 6.7% of our students, compared with 0.9% in 2021, 2.3% in 2020, and 2.8% in 2019. Since 2022 this figure has been significantly higher than all other years. The students in this group are either:

• Students who have been away overseas for two or more weeks during school time

• Students who have at least one day away from school most weeks

We continue to have a significant number of families who travel during school term time, and this does impact children’s learning progress and their social connections at school. An attendance level of 80% equates to 1/5 of time in school. For one term this means missing two weeks in a single term. If your child’s attendance is 80% (or less) for the whole year, this means missing 1/5 of an entire year, which is eight weeks - almost an entire term. This will have significant ramifications for their progress at school.

We understand that there are occasions when overseas travel may be necessary and the timing if this is not always controllable, particularly for our families with whānau overseas. However, we ask all families to, wherever possible, endeavour to book all travel within the twelve weeks of holiday time each year. We also ask families to be aware of having children away from school for single days on a regular basis (such as every week or every couple of weeks). This is a pattern to be very mindful of, as absence levels can sneak up on you, and repeated absences can be unsettling and hard to get over if they are regularly happening. All absence from school has an impact to some degree, and consistently low levels of attendance have lasting impacts on achievement and social connections. 

Over the next week we will be sending out attendance communications for Term 1 student attendance. We do this without judgement; this is simply to ensure parents and whānau are well informed about their child/ren’s level of attendance at school and can make informed decisions about their child’s attendance at school in the terms ahead. Low levels of absence can sneak up on you, so we will draw your attention to it if the level is low.

We will continue to monitor our school attendance as usual, and we will report our attendance levels each term, communicating with families to ensure you are aware of your child/ren’s attendance levels.

Kia pai te rā whakatā, have a wonderful weekend and keep warm!

Ngā mihi nui, 

Urs Cunningham