A Paeroa primary school is celebrating its success in getting kids back into the classroom.
Miller Avenue School principal, Derek Martin, told The Profile attendance rates had soared since the school began offering organised extracurricular activities such as sports, music, and art during morning tea and lunchtime.
“It’s had a wonderful effect, better than I had imagined,” he said.
“You can see how happy the kids are – they’re not coming back to the classroom wound up or unhappy.
“Their reading, writing, and maths is also improving. I think the two go hand in hand. If you’ve got kids being excited to be at school, enjoying their sports and arts, then the chances are that they are likely to also do well in the classroom.”
According to the school’s attendance management plan, only 51 per cent of students were achieving regular attendance status at the end of Term Two last year.
“The number of students who have regular attendance is now at an impressive 70 per cent,” Derek said.
“Regular attendance” is defined by the Ministry of Education as having less than five days’ absence per term.
The daily statistics have also improved, Derek said, with over 90 per cent of students turning up each day this term – a 10-20 per cent increase from the same time last year.
Staff have felt the change too, Derek said, and were eager to keep it going.
“The staff are offering to run more and more activities because they realize how it benefits the kids… There’s a real sense of purpose around the school.”
On any given day, students can now be found decorating the courtyard with chalk, learning guitar, or racing around the field for a game of rippa rugby. A sunny lunchtime in March saw teachers running a skipping and dancing session, complete with “loud music and good vibes”. A month before that, the children were practicing their serves for mini-tennis.
“I asked a new kid, ‘how are you feeling? Do you like our school?’ And he was like, ‘I love it,’ which was wonderful for me as principal,” Derek said.
“And a mum – I asked her how kids were going and she said, ‘they just love your school.’ And complaints from parents about kids being bullied – we still have them like every other school, but far less.
“I’m not pretending everything’s perfect. We have our challenges, but when you’re looking at overall how things are going, we have a lot of very happy kids.”
An Education Review Office report from October, 2024, said there were over 80,000 “chronically absent students” nationwide in Term Two that year – meaning students were attending school 70 per cent or less of the time. Since then, the Ministry of Education has been working with schools to bring attendance levels back up.
The Ministry is aiming for 80 per cent of students to achieve regular attendance status by the year 2030.
