Attendance at Ararira – Our Attendance Management Plan

Attendance Monitoring at Ararira

The government has publicly stated that it wishes to lift attendance rates at New Schools so 80% of all children are attending 90% of the time by 2030. We have set this as a target for our kura|school in 2026.

All schools are required to have an attendance management plan (AMP) in place that follows stepped attendance responses (STAR).

Link to our AMP – Attendance Management Plan

Why is it so important to attend school every day?

• • Learning is a progressive activity; lessons build on each other.
  • Reading the material and completing work independently does not compensate for the loss of insight gained during class discussions the extra information gained through explanation & supervised activities.
  • Teachers use discussions, demonstrations, experiments and participation as part of the daily learning activities. These cannot be made up by those who are absent.
  • Regular student participation in daily classroom activities plays a significant role in a student’s school success.

Our attendance procedures: 

1. Teacher marks roll in the morning
2. Known absences are coded by administration staff. These codes are provided by the Ministry. Link for reference.
3. Classes are checked to ensure students have not arrived late without signing in.
4. Text sent to whānau requesting the reason for absence from class.
5. If no contact is received from whānau, then the student is marked truant at the end of the day, (if contact is received after the absence then this mark is changed to accurately reflect the reason).
6. After 5 days of continuous absence (generally a week or so) administrator discusses it with the classroom teacher. Whānau contacted with offers of support. Referrals made if necessary.
7. After 5 days of intermittent absences, contact is made with home.
8. After 10 days or intermittent absences, contact made and a plan implemented to improve attendance.
9. After 15 days of intermittent attendance, a parent meeting is called if there is no improvement then a referral is made to attendance services.

Contact will be made by phone, email or through the Hero App.

Going on Holiday or Need Offsite Learning?

• Send an email to the principal and class teacher indicating the holiday, reason and dates you will be away. We then record this in Hero and send you a small list of suggestions to ensure learning continues while you are away.
• We acknowledge that many families have strong links overseas. If the holiday is linked to your culture or staying connected to families, then we are able to justify 5 days of the holiday.
• General holidays are marked as a ‘holiday in term time’ and will show as an unjustified absence.
• Some activities can be marked as a justified absence and coded accordingly – we need to know and approve these first.

School and education are so important to a child’s future success. We are here to help.