7. Question No. 7—EducationLAURA TRASK (ACT) to the Associate Minister of EducationQuestion No. 7—Education7. LAURA TRASK (ACT) to the Associate Minister of Education: What progress has he made in making student attendance data more available?Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): On 7 May I announced a new online data dashboard which makes daily attendance data available to the public and parents in a more timely way. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average and also regional breakdowns of how many students attended school each and every day. [Turns laptop toward members of the House]SPEAKER: I can't see that from here.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Speaker I'm sure that you should have gone to Specsavers.Laura Trask: How will publishing attendance data help improve school attendance?Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Well it is critical that we create a sense of national focus on what is perhaps one of our biggest long-term problems in New Zealand—not enough students attending school. Publishing the data each week for daily attendance creates that focus but also allows us to better understand the data. So far this term we've seen that there is a real problem with fewer students attending each Friday. We've also seen a gradual decline in attendance over the last four weeks which we might attribute to the winter season where more and more people have been calling in sick. Understanding this kind of data while not currently encouraging will allow us to take a more proactive approach to increasing attendance. I'd also like to point out that in the last week to Friday 24 90.8 percent of schools reported their data voluntarily and this is a fabulous development. It started off closer to 85 percent. We're now at nearly 91 percent of schools voluntarily reporting their data. We will aim for 100 percent when it becomes mandatory next year. But we are finally being honest about the problem getting the data required to solve it proactively so that we can get students back to school which is far more than the previous Government did where Jan Tinetti was—SPEAKER: That's enough thank you. If you want more questions that's enough. Laura Trask: What is the daily attendance rate that schools should aspire to?Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: This Government has set a goal that by 2030 80 percent of students will be attending school at least 90 percent of the time. That compares with term 4 last year when only 46 percent reached that target and term 1 this year where the figure was closer to 53. To get to 80 is going to be an enormous effort and that's why it is paced out over the coming six years. However the question was in relation to daily attendance rate. When you have 80 percent of students attending 90 percent of the time you actually require a daily rate of approximately 94 percent. I'll also just correct what I said earlier; I was relaying term 3 and 4 last year not term 4 last year and term 1 this year in the earlier part of my answer.SPEAKER: I'll just remind the Minister that this is question time for relatively concise answers not long dissertations that might be more in the nature of a general debate speech. Laura Trask. No more? Oh OK that makes it better.