May 08, 2024
Seymour gets school roll data portal
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has launched an online data dashboard to record school attendance.
The interactive dashboard will allow users to see a national average of how many students are at school on any given day, or they can use filters to see differences between regions and shifts in attendance over time.
Mr Seymour says the level of absence has been higher for every term since the pandemic, and in term four last year more than 330,000 students were not regularly attending school.
He says it’s time to create a national focus on student attendance.
“For too long we’ve been flying blind. You don’t get the data until months after the term finishes. Now you’re going to get it every week for each day and already we can understand patterns like there seems to be a Friday drop off – that’s something that needs to be addressed,” he says.
Mr Seymour says the Government has set a target of ensuring 80 per cent of students are present for more than 90 per cent of the term by 2030 – and he wants schools to aspire to reach an average daily attendance rate above 94 per cent.