![\"Jan](\"https:\/\/rnz-ressh.cloudinary.com\/image\/upload\/s--gXIxFSv7--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1687828513\/4L6RA2D_RNZD1814_jpg\")
<\/p>\nJan Tinetti\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Angus Dreaver<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Term two’s always been traditionally our term where winter illnesses hit, it’s a bit of a tougher term, but I would expect that compared to term two last year that we would see an upward trajectory,” she said.<\/p>\n Tinetti said she was also confident schools were on track to meet the government’s target of regular attendance reaching 70 percent next year.<\/p>\n “Schools are really positive about getting their young people back to school. The kids seem really set on the fact that they want to be in school,” she said.<\/p>\n Tinetti said 762 schools had also used “regional response” funding to run their own schemes encouraging families to send children to class every day.<\/p>\n Rangikura School principal Eddie Uluilelata, pictured with students, said the school was fighting to get back to its pre-Covid attendance rates.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ John Gerritsen<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Rangikura School principal Eddie Uluilelata said attendance dropped badly after the pandemic began.<\/p>\n “It was a rough time,” he said.<\/p>\n “We dropped down to quite low percentages, 60, 70 probably even lower in some year levels.”<\/p>\n Uluilelata said the school was fighting to get back to its pre-Covid attendance rates which were in the high 80 and 90 percents.<\/p>\n He said consistently following up with the families of absent children and having an attendance officer were helping to improve attendance.<\/p>\n The school also shared weekly attendance rates with pupils, making it something of a competition, he said.<\/p>\n “We hear our kids talking like that to their parents, about the importance of coming to school, because they want to ensure that they are supporting the year level attendance levels,” he said.<\/p>\n The attendance officer for the school’s K\u0101hui Ako, or cooperating group of local schools, Lisa Fanueli, said a range of factors was driving poor attendance.<\/p>\n “It could be anxiety within the home. Some families I’ve dealt with the fear is coming from the parents, with Covid spreading again. The other barriers are food and it could even be the language barrier,” she said.<\/p>\n Fanueli said rising costs were also harming attendance.<\/p>\n North Porirua K\u0101hui Ako attendance kai\u0101whina Lisa Fanueli said the most important factor in improving attendance was building a rapport with families.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ John Gerritsen<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n She said the most important factor in improving attendance was building a rapport with families.<\/p>\n “Just being an ear, allowing them to offload to me. Then I go off and have a chat to my team and we work with them, alongside the families,” she said.<\/p>\n Fanueli said she had been in the job since 2022, pre-dating the government’s attendance officer initiative.<\/p>\n In Northland, school attendance rates were hovering about 48 percent in term one.<\/p>\n But Tai Tokerau Principals’ Association president and Hora Hora Primary School principal Pat Newman said the changes were starting to work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A school attendance officer says anxiety about Covid-19, lack of food, and language barriers are contributing to poor attendance by some children. The government announced on Tuesday schools had hired 84 attendance officers to help get more children to class every day. It provided funding for the officers as part of a $74-million plan announced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7396,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7394\/revisions\/7396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Rangikura](\"https:\/\/rnz-ressh.cloudinary.com\/image\/upload\/s--a4GDeSAy--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1692664089\/4L3VRIH_20230822_101519_jpg\")
![\"North](\"https:\/\/rnz-ressh.cloudinary.com\/image\/upload\/s--PvMqf3ap--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1692663985\/4L3VRL1_20230822_101347_jpg\")