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Government Corrects Figure After Call-Out For Overstating School Attendance Improvements
John Gerritsen, Education Correspondent
The government has corrected a figure after being called out for overstating improvements in school attendance.
A member of the public complained to RNZ that two National Party advertisements claimed 150,000 more children attended school regularly in term four last year than at the same time in 2022.
They said Education Ministry roll figures indicated that was an over-statement.
When RNZ examined the figures it found the change between 2022 and 2025 was about 135,000 students - 15,000 short of the number claimed by the government.
But there were also a lot more children at school in the final term of 2025 than in the same term in 2022, and even if the rate of regular attendance had remained unchanged the number of regular attenders would have increased by about 65,000 students.
That meant only about 70,000 students could be attributed to improvements in attendance.
The National Party told RNZ it sourced its figures from an announcement by Associate Education Minister David Seymour in January.
That announcement said the number of regular attenders improved by "about 150,000" children between term four 2022 and term four 2025.
RNZ asked the National Party if it would correct the ad and received a response from Seymour's office saying the figure "was based on an error" and had been corrected.
There was keen interest in attendance figures.
Regular attendance, measured as children attending more than 90 percent of the time, reached all-time lows in 2022 with schools blaming the effect of covid lockdowns in previous years and on a particularly bad run of winter illnesses.
The government had overhauled the attendance system and set a goal of 80 percent of pupils being regular attenders by 2030.
For the record, here's our working:
In term four of 2022 there were 329,499 regular attenders and in term four 2025 there were 464,498, an increase of 134,999.
But there were more students overall in 2025 than in 2022 - just 676,384 in the final term of 2022 and 810,652 in the same term of 2025.
If the rate of regular attendance in term four last year was the same as in 2022 (48.7 percent), there would have been 394,788 regular attenders, an increase of 65,288 due solely to the overall increase in the number of students.
That meant only 69,710 of the increase in the number of regular attenders could be attributed to the rate of regular attendance improving to 57.3 percent.
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