Thousands of Kiwi children staying away from school

Thousands of Kiwi pupils continue to dodge school, with the latest Ministry of Education report showing that 76,500 students were away from school each day last year.

That’s 10.2 per cent of students, up from 9.9 per cent in 2015.

The data showed 67.2 per cent of students were regularly attending school, down from a five-year peak of 69.5 per cent in 2015.

But it seems many parents aren’t too worried — in fact they are contributing to the absenteeism with an increasing number of holidays taken during term time.

That climbed 50 per cent last year, accounting for 0.6 per cent of all class time, up from 0.4 per cent in 2015. The average holiday length was 4.5 days.

It’s an international issue — British parents can be fined if they let children skip school during term.

More than 50,000 tickets were issued in Britain in 2014/15.

The Kiwi data shows that in 2016 Asian students were the most likely to take holidays in term time. But they also had the highest attendance, with 77 per cent attending regularly, which is defined as being at school more than 90 per cent of the time.

They were followed by Pakeha and Middle Eastern/Latin American/ African students at 70.5 per cent and 69.4 per cent respectively.

Among Pasifika students 57.2 per cent attended regularly, followed by just 54.7 per cent of Maori students.

Overall Maori and Pasifika students spent more than twice as much time truant as other ethnicities.

South Island students have better attendance rates than the North Island. Otago/Southland had the best result with 71.2 per cent attending regularly, with Te Tai Tokerau the lowest at just 55.9 per cent.

By high school girls’ attendance was falling behind, although their absences were more often for justified reasons such as illness. Only 43.5 per cent of female students were at school regularly by Year 13 compared with 49.9 per cent of male students.

In March police began a major truancy operation across Auckland in a bid to reduce crime, targeting young people who were ditching school or not attending alternative education.

It saw officers patrolling locations where youths were known to congregate during school hours.