2025: Responding to all absences

The government's target is for 80% of all students to attend regularly, that is to attend school more than 90% of the time.

One of the things we are continuing to focus on in 2025 is student attendance. You will hear us talking about this with you, with our students and it remains a strong subject of conversation in the staff room.

If a student misses one day of school every two weeks, they miss more than a whole year of school by 16 years of age. As a parent or caregiver, you, alongside our school, play a key role in building strong habits of regular school attendance.

All students are legally required to attend school every day and it is a shared responsibility to make sure students attend and engage in learning from when they first start school.

Knowing if your child is well enough to go to school can be tricky. Health guidance to support you to decide is available here. If you are still unsure, get in touch with us and let’s work together to support your learner.

It will be mandatory for all schools to have an attendance management plan based on STAR from the beginning of the 2026 school year.

From Term 1, 2025, daily attendance must be recorded every day schools are open for instruction and entered into HERO by our staff by 6:00 p.m. each day with the correct codes.

If we do not have the correct information from you we have to mark your child as unjustified or truant, dependent on what information we have or have not received from you. Details provided after an event will not alter the coding, we must know beforehand.

It is vital that you communicate with the school about why your child is not at school.
You must specify the reason, simply saying that they are away is not enough
Holidays during term time are coded as G, these are unjustified absences. Permission must before sought in advance by emailing
admin@sis.school.nz

Attendance Codes are NZ Government directives. When coding absences we must comply with the legislation.

Justified Absences include:

Illness /medical absence
Justified overseas posting
Stood down or suspended
Explained and approved by the School Principal or Deputy Principal (not including Holidays during term time)

Unjustified Absences include:

Truant
Explained but not accepted
Holiday during term time

Additional information can be found on our school docs and policy page https://sis.schooldocs.co.nz/ search: "student attendance"

Te Oraka Shirley Intermediate School

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