The Education Ministry said some schools were inaccurately marking students as absent, and there is a nationwide effort to ensure accurate attendance recording.
Students are reported to have been marked absent on days when the school was closed or when they were simply late to class.
“We’ve seen cases where students are incorrectly marked absent – such as being late but within the school’s threshold, or attending approved offsite learning but coded as absent,” the ministry said.
“Also, on days when schools are closed (e.g., teacher-only days or strikes), no attendance data should be recorded – yet sometimes it is.”
According to the Secondary Principals Association, the ministry’s effort was responsible for the improvement in attendance figures. However, the ministry stated that it had not altered any rules and that the impact of more accurate record-keeping would be minimal.
“While correcting errors like marking students absent on closed days may slightly affect attendance figures, the code updates themselves do not artificially improve rates,” it said.
The ministry said it was collaborating with 600 schools experiencing attendance challenges.
“Support varies – from improving data quality and coding practices to strengthening community engagement and attendance leadership,” the ministry said.
The government aimed for 80% of students to attend school regularly, defined as attending more than 90% of the time, by 2030.
Regular attendance has been improving since hitting record lows in 2022.
The Secondary Principals Association reported that, in some instances, there were discrepancies of up to 10 percentage points between the attendance data provided by schools and the ministry’s figures for those same schools.
“There are a few data issues there.”
“The ministry are looking to support schools to make sure that data is cleared up. That, of course, will have an impact, and… we have seen an increase in attendance data as a result.”