Students at Te Kōmanawa Rowley Primary School who turn up for 80 percent of the time will get a new uniform and free stationery. Photo: Google Maps
Parents at a Christchurch school are being offered financial incentives if their children meet attendance targets.
The government has set a target of 80 percent of students being in class 90 percent of the time by 2030.
It said attendance has risen every term since it was elected.
In term two of this year, slightly more than 58 percent of students attended school regularly, compared to nearly 40 percent in term two of 2022.
Te Kōmanawa Rowley Primary School has set a slightly lower target than the government, in a bid to boost attendance.
Students who turn up for 80 percent of the time in term four will get a new uniform for next year and free stationery.
Te Kōmanawa Rowley School principal Graeme Norman told Checkpoint the idea was to try and meet the targets the government had put on attendance, as well as highlighting that it was important for students to be at school.
Norman said while attendance was improving, he hoped the incentives would speed up the process.
The school currently had 40 percent of students in class 90 percent of time - only half of the government target.
"We're getting there, we just wanna keep pushing and keep this attendance at the forefront."
Norman said there were a number of factors affecting attendance rates at his school, including sickness.
"If you are sick, you are classed as being absent. In the last term we had the tummy bug go through the school, which can cause an issue due to children having a couple of days off - the Ministry of Health guidelines are 48 hours after the last time you're sick, you're safe to come back to school.
"Health issues also for our community can cause an issue because we're in a low social economic area of Christchurch."
He said the cost of living crisis was also creating deeper issues.
"Through the winter months, power bills are very high. We've got a lot of very old stock of Kainga Ora houses so families are running two to three heat pumps just to stay warm, so they're prioritising food over power sometimes, or sometimes some of our families are having the whole family sleep in one room, so they're keeping warm.
"It's not as easy to sleep when everyone's in the one room."
Norman said the state housing conditions were also contributing to illness, which affected attendance.
"When you've got everyone in the same room, those bugs get passed on very easily.
"This attendance issue is a bigger problem than just our kids should go to school, and there's a good example is where we have to look at the state housing stock and what we're doing around improving that."
Norman said they had chosen to incentivise through uniforms and stationdry to alleviate some of the costs families were facing after Christmas.
"We try and keep everything as cheap as possible, but a new uniform for a kid at our school is about $180, and then you're looking at about $60 for stationery. So if you've got two or three kids at the beginning of the year, that's a huge financial burden. So it was a way to try and take that burden off and reward coming to school."
He said there had been great enthusiasm for the idea so far.
"Some of my parents were just over the moon to know that that's going to be there to take the pressure off."
About half of the funding needed was currently being provided by donors, but in order to keep the programme sustainable, Norman said he hoped more people would get on board to sponsor it.
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