Seymour pointed to New Zealand’s attendance rates having fallen from 69.5 percent in term 2015, to 39.9 percent in term two 2022.
That’s actually quite a shocking statistic, there must be a large number of kids simply never attending school at all to have an average that low.
This does not pass the sniff test. Most of my sons’ classmates are in school all term, bar the odd ilness here and there, or the odd early leaving for a holiday. If attendance was really that bad, you would expect classrooms to be much smaller.
As per the other comment, it sounds like the data is being presented in a very counter-intuitive way.