Covid 19 Omicron: School attendance rates plummet below 50 per cent

School attendance rates for term 1 plummeted below 50 per cent - the lowest in at least a decade, as the Omicron outbreak ripped through communities. Record low levels of school attendance hit Māori and Pasifika hardest with fewer than a third of those populations attending school regularly (attending more than 90 per cent of the time). The latest Ministry of Education data showed overall 46.1 per cent of all students were attending school regularly. This was down from 72.8 per cent in term 1 2019, pre-Covid, 50.5 per cent in 2020 and 66.8 per cent in 2021. In term 4 last year it was 65 per cent. The Ministry noted the Covid-19 Omicron outbreak resulted in 'high levels of absences for both students and staff'.