5. Question No. 5—Education (School Operations)ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Associate Minister of Education (School Operations)Question No. 5—Education (School Operations)5. ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Associate Minister of Education (School Operations): Why are less than 40 percent of students attending school regularly and what impact if any has declining attendance had on student achievement in literacy and numeracy?Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education (School Operations)): To the first part of the question: the member is referring to the data from term 1 of this year. The data shows that 40 percent of students missed a cumulative of at least one week of school during term 2. This is attributable to the fact that New Zealand was at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and experiencing higher levels of typical winter illnesses. The health order at the time required people to isolate if COVID positive or a household contact and the public health advice was to stay home if unwell. In regards to the second part of the question we don't measure the correlation between regular attendance and literacy and numeracy attainment. However one can draw reasonable conclusions that if you aren't attending school regularly this will have an impact on your learning which is why every step of the way throughout the pandemic the Government has provided targeted resources in support for schools to respond to any disengagement from education their young people faced.Erica Stanford: How is it that despite her targeted assistance of tens of millions of dollars over the last two years today's results show that over a hundred thousand students are still chronically absent from school?Hon JAN TINETTI: I actually refute what the member's saying there. The fact that young people are not attending regularly does not mean that they are chronically absent. There are three levels of absence in schools: one is regularly attending and then it goes down. So a young person may have missed a week due to COVID isolation meaning that they wouldn't be able to then be regularly attending but they might have attended all other nine weeks of that term. So to say that they are chronically truant is not right. But what I will say also is the fact that those young people and their families followed the health orders was a good thing because if they didn't those figures would have been a lot lower.Erica Stanford: Why is it that after half a decade of her Government it's taking more than half a school year on average to get unenrolled students back to school?Hon JAN TINETTI: We know that we want to see every young child and young person present participating and progressing in education which is why this Government is taking action to support this. One of the aspects that we are doing with that is that the Attendance Service who works with this cohort has just received a big funding to help them in that work. This will enable them to get those young people back to school earlier.Erica Stanford: Why is it that after five years of her Government the number of students unenrolled from school for 12 months or more has reached nearly a thousand a number that has tripled under her Government?Hon JAN TINETTI: We know that those figures in the last two years have been impacted by COVID just like everything else. There has been a response to the fact that COVID has impacted across the whole of the community which is why this Government has put an attendance strategy in place. But what I will also say is that we also need to do and have started this with the attendance strategy a campaign to make certain that parents get their kids to school so that they get the education that they deserve. This is not solely on one sector of society; these solutions need to have everybody on board—everybody in this House everybody outside of this House—because education will give our young people choices.Erica Stanford: Can she explain how she expects Blue Light services in South Auckland—the Attendance Service—to make any meaningful and effective change to the lives of over 2000 unenrolled young people that are on their books when their attendance officers have a caseload of 200 students each?Hon JAN TINETTI: That's exactly why we have put more money into the attendance services to help with that and it is exactly why we're also looking at a redesign of the Attendance Service. I recently visited one of our pilot areas. I've seen the difference it makes when we bring those services closer to school and I'm looking forward to seeing those results pan out in more young people attending education and employment.Erica Stanford: If her redesign of the Attendance Service still puts unenrolled students with attendance services like Blue Light how are they going to make any effective change if they have 200 students on their books for every officer employed?Hon JAN TINETTI: If the member listened to the response to the last question she will know that this Budget saw a 20 to 26 percent increase in funding for the Attendance Service to help exactly those services compared to the increase of less than 2 percent under National.