Education Minister Jan Tinetti believes recent Labour announcements have turned the tide for New Zealand's truancy problem.
Last week, Tinetti announced $74 million for new school attendance officers.
Tinetti told Newshub Nation host Rebecca Wright that while we were heading towards a truancy crisis, she's "going to put a stake in the sand and say that we've made improvements".
"We were heading that way, but we're back on track again," she said.
"We know that attendance has been dropping since 2015, and we know that we have to put a stop to that," she said.
Attendance remains a problem for many schools across the country and, according to the Ministry of Education, in 2022 93,000 children attended school less than 80 percent of the year and 95,000 attended less than 70 percent.
Children who attend school less than 70 percent of the year are missing the equivalent of a full term's worth of learning.
However, Tinetti said the numbers can be misleading.
"The way that that is being reported - there's a whole lot that sits under that."
Tinetti distinguished between justified and non-justified attendance, explaining justified usually means they are sick.
"Non-justified is like a throwaway excuse. They've gone on holiday for a week for example."
Tinetti said that many of those who are chronically not attending school are sitting within the justified category, particularly over the COVID period.
"We were facing young people that would have to isolate for seven days. They may have had to isolate for when they had other members of their family sick as well," Tinetti said.
While Tinetti said she was "absolutely not" defending that level of absenteeism, "the COVID years have exacerbated the issue of school attendance".
"I know we have to turn that around," she said, adding that we still have to distinguish between justified and non-justified absences.
"When you have people who say 'oh it's ok to take kids away for a holiday', that's a non-justified absence, let's put a stop to that."
The question remains, how will Labour transform the sector and get school attendance back on track?
Last week, Labour announced 82 additional attendance officers around the country, but there are questions about whether they will provide enough of a boost to attendance.
Tinetti says the new officers will "work with schools to work on the moderate absences so that they don't fall into that chronic group".
While the officers "won't be responsible directly for kids, schools might want them to go into homes and work with those homes."
The officers will work with schools "to help them develop their strategies and access the right resources to work with those kids," Tinetti said.
Tinetti denied that these officers would simply add another layer of bureaucracy.
The officers "will help schools decide which initiatives are working well or what else they can be adopting," she said.
"That's not to say those officers can't go out, they have the ability through legislation to go out and work directly with the families that need it."
Tinetti claims the measure is "very transformative," and recalled her experiences as a high-school principal to illustrate why.
"I used to be able to contact my attendance service and say 'I've got this young person I'm worried about, we can't quite get to the bottom of what's going on here, can you do it?'"
In 2013, the National party reduced funding for these roles and, as such, they could only work with chronic absentees.
The 82 new officers, who will be able to work with kids absent at any level, will be supported by additional funding for attendance services to try and reduce the number of children in the chronically absent category as well.
Attendance services will now be able to "knock on doors, they might see if they can find out other information about the child's family, they might go to places the children hang out, they might go to the community centres that are out in the community to ask what they know."
When these measures get no response "that's when they ratchet it up to another level".
Tinetti emphasised that Labour is also funding other parts of the community to help support chronically absent students.
"We have community centres that have contracts that work in that area. This is a community response.
"These issues are so complex that we are dealing with here that we need a whole community response."
The Education Ministry's stated goal is 70 percent of kids going to school 90 percent of the time by this time next year.
"Seventy-five percent is where we are headed to," said Tinetti.
When questioned on the ambitiousness of her plans, Tinetti responded "I want every kid at school every single day".
"But I'm also realistic," she said. "Young people get sick. Young people need to stay at home when they get sick and we want to send that message too."
A critical part of the solution for Tinetti that she says often gets missed is engagement.
"Let's get them engaged in their learning 100 percent of the time.
"That means when they're at home they are excited about learning. They want to get back to school. When they're sick they want to get back there.
"I did it on a micro level at my school, I know we can do it on a macro level across this country."
Watch the full video for more.
Watch Newshub Nation 9:30am Saturday/10am Sunday on Three & Three Now, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.
