ISSUE #8: Education

KPI: School Attendance Term II

AKA: schooling

Term 1, 3, and 4 data has only been collated since 2019, so we need to use term 2 data which has been collated since 2011.
The Covid limitation and lockdown rules that began on 19 March 2020 nationwide and the final lockdown that ended on 15 December 2021 in Auckland, obviously had a significant impact on school attendance for some of this timeframe. Some argue that these were necessary and appropriate measures. Some believe that they weren't aggressive enough. And some believe that they shouldn't have happened, were too harsh, or went on too long. Context and judgments like this are subjective, so they are impossible to show in a graph. It is up to each reader to evaluate the proportion of responsibility they place on each government over the timeframe shown, versus factors outside of their control.
Remember that each Labour-led or National-led government has had coalition partners that share the successes, and the failures, with them. A full list of governments for this time range is at the bottom of this page.

Data shown:

% of primary and secondary school children attending 90% of school days or more (9 out of 10 days in a fortnight)
Term 2
2011 onwards as that is when the data series began.

Data not shown:

Full data:

Frequency:

Updated:

Terms 1/3/4 = ~2 months after term ends
Term 2 = 4.5 months (the Ministry says term 2 data is more detailed so requires more time)

Last update:

Next update:

2025 Term 2 = September 2025? (remember that we are only showing term 2 data for the reasons listed above and below)

The two key measurements of education are:
- Attendance = are they showing up?
- Qualifications = are they learning skills to prosper in life?
It’s a lot harder to achieve those qualified skills if you don’t first turn up, which is why we measure attendance as the primary KPI.

Term 1/3/4 attendance data

As this only started in 2019 and has been significantly interrupted by Covid lockdowns, so is less useful, and doesn’t allow us to compare performance between governments.

With support, we’ll be able to add multiple KPIs for each issue:

Updates on many of KPIs listed above.
Non-enrolled children per capita (coming soon on www.theFacts.nz)
Full breakdown of all NCEA and UE levels achieved (we have this data)
Numeracy/literacy scores across all international and internal benchmark tests
Teaching staff per capita (frontline vs back office) (spending and staff levels are input, not output measures)
Average classroom size
ECE (Early Childhood Education) teacher metrics

2008 = National + ACT, United, Māori
2011 = National + ACT, United, Māori
2014 = National + ACT, United, Māori
2017 = Labour/NZ First + Green
2020 = Labour + Green

Sources:1,2 (table 5)

Data published by Ministry of Education
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Licensed for use under the creative commons attribution licence (BY) 4.0

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