Photo: RNZ/ Nick Monro
The Education Review Office (ERO) is scrutinising school attendance for the second time in three years.
The office appeared before Parliament's Education and Workforce Select Committee on Wednesday morning for its annual review.
Chief review officer Nick Pole told the committee it reviewed or visited nearly 4000 early learning services and schools in the 2023/24 year identifying "pockets of excellence", but also areas of concern.
He said challenges included poor student attendance, poor classroom behaviour and learning support for children with disabilities.
Deputy chief executive Ruth Shinoda told the committee the office was investigating school attendance to follow up its 2022 report on the subject. She said it wanted to see if anything had changed since the report found parental attitudes were the biggest driver of poor attendance.
Shinoda said it was important those attitudes changed, and ERO expected to publish a report in September.
Pole said the number of chronically absent students had doubled from about 40,000 to 80,000 in the past four or five years, and now included a lot more primary school children.
He said 85 percent of early learning services and 75 percent of schools said ERO visits and reports helped them improve.
He said it was difficult to attribute particular improvements in student achievement to ERO's influence, but the organisation was working on ways of measuring its effect on the education system.
Deputy chief executive for review and improvement services Shelley Booysen said some schools required significant improvements, and were not capable of making changes by themselves.
She said the main problems for those schools tended to be with teaching and learning, leadership and attendance.
