What happens when your classmates keep leaving? The impact of school transience on pupils ‘left behind’
- Written by Rachel Williamson-Dean, Postgraduate Research Fellow, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland

The claim last week by National Party leader Christopher Luxon that 100,000 New Zealand schoolchildren were chronically truant quickly turned into an argument about terminology, statistics and how to interpret them.
In fact, it appears Luxon was referring to a figure from term one this year that showed 101,861 children were...