Attendance Data Services
This is the main index page for attendance data. From here you can access data on attendance and analysis based on the data.
Page Contents:
Release schedule for termly attendance data
The expected dates for the release of attendance reports and data for the different terms are shown in the table below. More products are released for Term 2 data, requiring additional time for development and review.
Term | Release date | Next release |
---|---|---|
Term 1 | Released by end of Term 2 | 2024 data - 5 July 2024 |
Term 2 | Released by second Thursday of November | 2024 data - 14 November 2024 |
Term 3 | Released by end of Term 4 | 2024 data - 20 December 2024 |
Term 4 | Released by end of Term 1 the following year | 2023 data - 12 April 2024 |
Key Findings: Data, Statistics and Publications
Statistics
Data released here are high-level aggregate views to support the Ministry’s reporting on the volumes of students returning back to early childhood services and schools during COVID-19.
Attendance[webpage]
Attendance under COVID-19[webpage]
Publications
Significant monitoring publications are produced each year. These tend to focus on a specific education sector, priority population group, and/or an education strategy related to one of these sectors or groups. Key measures such as student attendance rates are used in these publications.
Why is the Ministry collecting this data?
Attendance is the first step in accessing learning, achieving education success and improving wellbeing and lifelong outcomes. Ministry analysis shows that attending school is linked to a student’s wellbeing and achievement.
Attendance data is core information required by the Ministry for monitoring the schooling system.
The Ministry collects student attendance data on a weekly and termly basis. We use both collections to:
- monitor truancy patterns and support policy development,
- implement and monitor interventions aimed at improving attendance, and
- support public reporting, including the datasets and reports published on Education Counts.
Attendance data is also used for general research and statistics, in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020. This may include linking attendance data with other student data, for example, for research on the correlation between student attendance and NCEA achievement. Care is taken that no individual can ever be identified from published analysis.
Privacy Statement: School Attendance Data Collection
What this document tells you
The purpose of this privacy statement is to explain to students, parents, caregivers, and whānau why the Ministry of Education collects information about student attendance from schools, what we use it for and how we look after it.
What personal information is collected
The attendance data for each student that is collected from schools includes:
- National Student Number (NSN)
- School Management System (SMS) Student ID
- Gender
- Current year level
- Ethnicity
- Student type (e.g., full-time or part-time)
- Dates of attendance
- Attendance codes
- Date a student met the five unjustified days threshold
- Date an intervention is required
- Date an intervention is applied
Why we collect your personal information
Attendance is the first step in accessing learning, achieving education success and improving wellbeing and lifelong outcomes. Ministry analysis shows that attending school is linked to a student’s wellbeing and achievement.
Attendance data is core information required by the Ministry for monitoring the schooling system.
The Ministry collects student attendance data on a weekly and termly basis. We use both collections to:
- monitor truancy patterns and support policy development,
- implement and monitor interventions aimed at improving attendance, and
- support public reporting, including the datasets and reports published on Education Counts.
Attendance data is also used for general research and statistics, in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020. This may include linking attendance data with other student data, for example, for research on the correlation between student attendance and NCEA achievement. Care is taken that no individual can ever be identified from published analysis.
Why we collect your information from schools
The Education (School Attendance) Regulations 1951 requires schools to keep a register of daily attendance and send a return of attendance to the Ministry for each term. Schools record this in their Student Management Systems.
Section 619 of the Education and Training Act 2020 allows the Secretary for Education to require information from schools for monitoring and ensuring student rights in respect of attendance.
Both the weekly and termly collections draw on Student Management System data to minimise burden on schools of providing this data.
How we collect your personal information
Schools collect student attendance information each day in their Student Management System. Schools submit data to the Ministry using a secure electronic transfer process.
How we keep your personal information safe
Once the Ministry receives student attendance information from schools’ Student Management Systems . , it is stored safely and securely in our Enterprise Data Warehouse. Attendance information is only accessed by Ministry staff who have a business need to use it.
Who we share your personal information with
Attendance data collected by the Ministry is not disclosed or shared with third parties unless there is a legal authority to do so.
Schools automatically receive reports from the Ministry based on their attendance data. These reports only relate to students enrolled at the school or Kāhui Ako.
Attendance data is submitted to Stats NZ’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) twice a year under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry. The IDI is a research database that is used for cross-sector research into New Zealand’s society and economy. Data in the IDI has personal identifiers removed or encrypted so that data records are not associated with named individuals.
How long we keep your personal information
Attendance data held in the Ministry’s Education Data Warehouse is kept until it is no longer required for research and analysis. Schools have different rules about how long they must keep student records.
Your rights under the Privacy Act 2020
The Privacy Act 2020 gives you the right to access information held about you and request correction of that information. To request access to your information, contact your school. Corrections made to student information held by the school can be resubmitted to the Ministry.
If you have questions that are not answered here, you can ask your school directly or contact us at everydaymatters@education.govt.nz
The Measures
The key measure of attendance is the proportion of students who attend regularly, that is, the percentage of students who have attended more than 90% of half-days. A half-day can either be the minimum two hours before, or after, noon contributing to the minimum four hours of a school day.
The Data Source
Historically our data collection for attendance was a weeklong paper-based survey, this subsequently moved to the electronic collection of data. Since 2011, all state and state integrated schools in New Zealand have been invited to submit Term 2 attendance data. Schools entering attendance records into their Student Management Systems (SMS) were asked to provide an extract of this data electronically. From 2020 schools have been asked to provide attendance data for each term.
The electronic files supplied by schools contain detailed attendance records. Each half-day's attendance or non-attendance is then reported.
Collecting and processing termly attendance data
When the collection first started schools provided data to the Ministry via data collection forms. Now schools use the electronic attendance register (eAR) from their Student Management System (SMS) to create and send electronic attendance files. Instructions on this process are available.
The information collected from schools as part of attendance data collection via SMS is SMS Student ID, National Student Number (NSN), gender, current year level, ethnicity, student type, attendance dates and attendance codes.
- Attendance Codes 2023 [PDF 185kB]
The following are the key steps in the collection, processing, and release of termly attendance reports and data:
- Data collection and processing
Each term needs to be complete before the data can be submitted by schools. Schools cannot be contacted to submit, query or correct attendance data until the following term begins. Three weeks is allowed at the beginning of each term to reach acceptable response rates and for the collection to be closed.
Every Day Matters summary reports are sent to each school immediately following the successful submission of their attendance data.
Once collection closes an initial suite of products is prepared for quality assurance and to support analysis.
- Quality assurance
Quality assurance and initial analysis cannot commence until the initial products have been produced. Additional time has been required over recent terms to understand unusual situations arising from COVID and its impacts. Processes may need to be adjusted and/or repeated to implement solutions.
- Data analysis and creation of products for Education Counts
Data analysis is undertaken. This sometimes requires detailed bespoke analyses to understand features of the data.
During this period products are prepared. Datasets are produced, spreadsheets are updated and reports written for release on Education Counts. Every Day Matters reports are produced for schools. All documents and products are carefully quality assured.
- Review and approval
Internal review and approval processes are followed. Before the Ministry releases the data publicly we provide it to the Minister for their information only under the no surprises principle, given significant public interest.
Some products are uploaded to internal databases to allow embargoed use by our regional staff, supporting their engagements with schools.