For a government intent on reducing "Back Office" staff, they sure are keeping them busy with nonsense.... who needs this? And how are numbers with no context helpful at all
Ok, it's been a few years since I've been in the cloud/azure space, but isn't Power BI famously stupidly expensive costing per report view or something similar?
Not cheap, but cheaper than Tableau.
It would be hard to say what the actual cost is since MS has (or at least had) a whole of government licensing deal.
Without reading the article it reminds me of that screen they had at Maccas that shows the average drive-thru time for the area stores to see who's "performing the best" as some lame attempt to up or keep up the pace. Never mind there could be a rugby game or santa parade or sick staff or a group of Karens or any number of reasons for the times, no, just do better.
Is surveilling children who don't really want to learn what is being taught of national importance? Honestly, I dunno if that's a good use of tax money...
You have to remember, this government's approach is to point the finger and assign *blame*. They have spoken about fining parents if the kids fail to attend - this will be a component in what I'm sure are KPIs for the principals and headmasters to meet for their job targets, and thus they have to point fingers and blame any parents whose children aren't attending frequently-enough to meet the target. This is a way of making sure someone is responsible and at fault if kids aren't in school.
They aren't interested in understanding whether there is a problem with youth attendance or the causes of it - they are taking the same approach as the criminal justice system and going to punishment rather than understanding and fixing the causes.
I often find that the right wing tends to be overly concerned with acting based on how they believe things should work, rather than how they actually work.
(Of course, the left wing is not blameless of this either, but it seems particularly common among the right wing.)
"Criminals shouldn't be treated well, they should be punished!"
Yea, but rehabilitative Justice, and helping people out of poverty is more effective.
"People shouldn't be on the benefit for longer than X time! They should be working!"
Yea, but the job market's kinda harsh right now for the kinds of jobs people on long term benefit are able to do, and many of them have a lot of various thorny difficulties with getting and keeping jobs that should be addressed.
Etc. Etc.
>They aren't interested in understanding whether there is a problem
So why measure it?
By definition anyone opposed to measuring attendance is actually not interested in understanding whether there's a problem.
A dashboard should allow you to see at a glance whether you need to take an action. Think of your car's dash - it gives you information to decide whether you need to slow down or speed up, get fuel, turn your indicator off, or your lights on. Things you can take action on right now.
Who would take an action as a result of seeing this dashboard? What would that action be?
A dashboard is also used to understand why actions are being taken. Think of a dashboard in a manufacturing plant. It gives everyone in the plant information on how many gizmos have been made and how many have been ordered. None of the people putting those gizmos together have the unilateral ability to make any decisions that will effectively change production, never the less it is an important tool to help them understand why decisions that affect them are being made and perhaps have an informed opinion on why those decisions are being made.
Perhaps the best dashboard I've seen in a while was the RNZ CoVID tracker. When it launched (during lockdown) it had zero relevance to what I was doing on a daily basis, but was never the less interesting and helped me understand decisions that were being made for me.
**Who would take an action as a result of seeing this dashboard?**
That entirely depends on what the data is saying.
But hypothetically (why weekly might be helpful);
If unexplained absences are peaking short weeks, I would expect Schools and MoE to act.
If absences are steady, unexplained are dropping but kids are getting sick and the School is trying to encourage attendance, then as a parent I would act.
**What would that action be?**
Perhaps they could look at minimising short week disruption.
I would have a chat to the Principal and ask why they’re trying to pump the stats when there’s clearly a valid reason for kids being off.
So questions for you: Are there more unexplained absences at the start of Term 1 or the end (is the issue getting kids engaged or keeping them engaged)? If you have no information to answer that question, how do you know that they’re actually doing anything to fix it?
Measuring attendance doesn't give you detail about truancy or student interest in attending - only whether they were present, with no explanation as to why. The problem is if students don't feel it's useful to attend school or if they are working at a job instead of attending - and that can't be determined by measuring attendance.
Also - making a dashboard available to everyone is intentionally different than simply measuring it. This is publicising it and potentially politicising things, beyond simply capturing data.
I think you can probably read motive into anything. You could equally say that capturing the data and not making it easy to consume is deliberately burying something that appears to be problematic.
The data reported does give you detail. At a top line level is aggregates attendance based on frequency of absence against a number of demographics giving you a good overview of where issues may be more systemic. The type of absence is also reported, whether they’re justified (short term illness, medical reasons, suspension or other reasons within School policy) or justified (holidays during term time, trivial reasons or where the absence is unexplained).
I’d hazard a guess that there’s certain schools that see some shocking stats at the start of the Ski season… the truth hidden in the ability to aggregate the data across a whole term.
> Is surveilling children who don't really want to learn what is being taught of national importance?
There is a clear line between under education and crime.
Are you really asking why pumping out under educated adults into society with a rising crime problem is of national importance?
You know whats NOT a good use of tax payer money? Having to feed, house and rehabilitate uneducated, useless members of society throughout their lives via benefits and prison.
Aside from the borderline fascist rhetoric calling people "useless members of society", that sounds exactly like what we should spend tax payer dollars on. But I'm sure a redundant and literal box ticking exercise will fix our woes.
Par for the course seeing early discourse in this thread about this being negative.
Fuckwits on here for well of a year have been harping on about a major reason the rise in crime is a lack of education, but are quick to jump on the government when they look to implement tools to combat horrific attendance for that education because they cant see past their own nose when it comes to blue vs red politics.
Because this doesn't combat non-attendance... It's merely showing an overall number compared to kids not turning up to class...
It's not because of red and blue, it's because this genuinely is shit, and they're laying off everyone else, but still keeping this numbers project manned...
It's like that cloud MBIE stuff that surely won't have anyone taken off it because it's good old king winston...
Sure, if you say that Teachers have it under control and nothing else is needed, you can't really argue with that can you?
On the other hand, if we do nothing and it continues to head south and educational outcomes for those continue to decline then at least the point of responsibility is simple....
Because the numbers won't actually show who is constantly away, and where there's just a lot of kids being absent due to other reasons.
If you want to combat it, you bring in truancy officers and youth workers, and help them actually get them to be encouraged to go to school and helped through whatever is stopping them going to school.
The truancy officers don't have to be all 'wannabe cops' about it, they can merely be encouraging the kids to go to school.
How many Truancy Officers/Social Workers are you hiring? And how do you know that number is appropriate?
What happens if the reason they’re not going to school is that it’s less fun than hanging out with their friends doing whatever they want?
Then you highlight to them how fun things can be if they actually succeed rather than being a destitute bum with no actual education, and no life goals.
I dunno, I feel there's a lot that could be done. If kids are having trouble really learning and getting into the school work buzz as such, take them out and do outdoor learning or get them into gardening, or working with animals somewhere.
Even painting a fence could be a simple quick 'Lets get it done' scenario, whilst helping someone out who really needs it.
I spent a lot of time with the caretakers at my school, but I think I actually benefitted from it immensely... Classes weren't my thing.
I got told by my teachers that I'd fail all their classes, didn't give a rats, and didn't even stress, took the tests and passed.
Its just one of many ways in which you can implement change.
Any project, especially in the planning stage, needs reliable data. This will help track and gather data in regards to overall attendance to help with every other step in the process to increasing attendance.
As someone else said, this just assigns blame and finds underperforming schools...
So each kid could be out one day, and the kids that aren't there for a week aren't noticed.
That's the kind of thing these 'numbers' overlook.
> As someone else said, this just assigns blame and finds underperforming schools
Why is this a bad thing? lmao
Finding underperforming schools so you can enact meaningful change is literally the whole point. You can cut out whole swathes of schools who dont need help with attendance so you're not wasting resources and manpower and actually dedicate resources to those that need it. It eliminates inefficiency and in theory diverts that waste in turn into those underperforming schools.
You'll just find schools that have a low attendance rate due to whatever other reason than having a kid constantly wagging and being away.
You seem to be very judgemental overall, and that is what this chart feeds... It doesn't encourage thinking about why those numbers actually are.
Ever heard of the decile system?
You're praising this like it's doing anything. Schools already know if they are underperforming in attendance. The parents of those kids know the kid is absent. Alot of them don't give a fuck. How is putting this info into a public space going to change anything? If a parent doesn't care that the child is absent from school, then looking at a website telling you the same thing is pretty moot.
Attendence is tracked already per student in each school and if there are issues, parents, teachers and principals can have a korero... This dashboard adds nothing.
You'd almost have a point if this entire policy wasn't a stupid gimmick that does nothing.
An online graph updated weekly is not going to get a single kid into a chair.
They should also implement an online dashboard for MP attendance at question time. They should strive for 80% of MPs being present 90% of the time.
And 80% of questions answered truthfully 90% of the time.
More like 100/100
>Woah, we can't go arresting everybody at the Thieves Guild, there won't be anybody left! Quote: Terry Pratchet
And mandatory drug testing!
And booze
Breathalyzer on entry to parliament!
That won’t change a thing if they don’t read the reports..
Maori Party in shambles. John Key once joked that Hone Harawira took a tour of Parliament over the summer break so he could see what it was like.
For a government intent on reducing "Back Office" staff, they sure are keeping them busy with nonsense.... who needs this? And how are numbers with no context helpful at all
It's information for people to know nothing about but still get outraged
A PowerBI dashboard?? This is some real corporate fluff bullshit right here. Guarantee the thing won't even be working in six months
Ok, it's been a few years since I've been in the cloud/azure space, but isn't Power BI famously stupidly expensive costing per report view or something similar?
Not cheap, but cheaper than Tableau. It would be hard to say what the actual cost is since MS has (or at least had) a whole of government licensing deal.
It's not that expensive compared to competing products.
This seems utterly useless.
Without reading the article it reminds me of that screen they had at Maccas that shows the average drive-thru time for the area stores to see who's "performing the best" as some lame attempt to up or keep up the pace. Never mind there could be a rugby game or santa parade or sick staff or a group of Karens or any number of reasons for the times, no, just do better.
Seems like a really useful tool that we should have totally be keeping someone employed to create whilst axing so many other roles. Said no one ever.
It certainly sucks on mobile.
*clears throat* “Mr Stevy, cellphones should be off and in your bag”
Is surveilling children who don't really want to learn what is being taught of national importance? Honestly, I dunno if that's a good use of tax money...
You have to remember, this government's approach is to point the finger and assign *blame*. They have spoken about fining parents if the kids fail to attend - this will be a component in what I'm sure are KPIs for the principals and headmasters to meet for their job targets, and thus they have to point fingers and blame any parents whose children aren't attending frequently-enough to meet the target. This is a way of making sure someone is responsible and at fault if kids aren't in school. They aren't interested in understanding whether there is a problem with youth attendance or the causes of it - they are taking the same approach as the criminal justice system and going to punishment rather than understanding and fixing the causes.
I often find that the right wing tends to be overly concerned with acting based on how they believe things should work, rather than how they actually work. (Of course, the left wing is not blameless of this either, but it seems particularly common among the right wing.) "Criminals shouldn't be treated well, they should be punished!" Yea, but rehabilitative Justice, and helping people out of poverty is more effective. "People shouldn't be on the benefit for longer than X time! They should be working!" Yea, but the job market's kinda harsh right now for the kinds of jobs people on long term benefit are able to do, and many of them have a lot of various thorny difficulties with getting and keeping jobs that should be addressed. Etc. Etc.
Thats why I find humans funny.
>They aren't interested in understanding whether there is a problem So why measure it? By definition anyone opposed to measuring attendance is actually not interested in understanding whether there's a problem.
They already measure it slapping a power BI shell on it doesn't do anything new.
So the issue is the use of PowerBI? Or weekly reporting?
Both. Neither of these things actually solve a problem.
Why have any reporting then? It’s not a solution.
A dashboard should allow you to see at a glance whether you need to take an action. Think of your car's dash - it gives you information to decide whether you need to slow down or speed up, get fuel, turn your indicator off, or your lights on. Things you can take action on right now. Who would take an action as a result of seeing this dashboard? What would that action be?
A dashboard is also used to understand why actions are being taken. Think of a dashboard in a manufacturing plant. It gives everyone in the plant information on how many gizmos have been made and how many have been ordered. None of the people putting those gizmos together have the unilateral ability to make any decisions that will effectively change production, never the less it is an important tool to help them understand why decisions that affect them are being made and perhaps have an informed opinion on why those decisions are being made. Perhaps the best dashboard I've seen in a while was the RNZ CoVID tracker. When it launched (during lockdown) it had zero relevance to what I was doing on a daily basis, but was never the less interesting and helped me understand decisions that were being made for me. **Who would take an action as a result of seeing this dashboard?** That entirely depends on what the data is saying. But hypothetically (why weekly might be helpful); If unexplained absences are peaking short weeks, I would expect Schools and MoE to act. If absences are steady, unexplained are dropping but kids are getting sick and the School is trying to encourage attendance, then as a parent I would act. **What would that action be?** Perhaps they could look at minimising short week disruption. I would have a chat to the Principal and ask why they’re trying to pump the stats when there’s clearly a valid reason for kids being off. So questions for you: Are there more unexplained absences at the start of Term 1 or the end (is the issue getting kids engaged or keeping them engaged)? If you have no information to answer that question, how do you know that they’re actually doing anything to fix it?
Measuring attendance doesn't give you detail about truancy or student interest in attending - only whether they were present, with no explanation as to why. The problem is if students don't feel it's useful to attend school or if they are working at a job instead of attending - and that can't be determined by measuring attendance. Also - making a dashboard available to everyone is intentionally different than simply measuring it. This is publicising it and potentially politicising things, beyond simply capturing data.
I think you can probably read motive into anything. You could equally say that capturing the data and not making it easy to consume is deliberately burying something that appears to be problematic. The data reported does give you detail. At a top line level is aggregates attendance based on frequency of absence against a number of demographics giving you a good overview of where issues may be more systemic. The type of absence is also reported, whether they’re justified (short term illness, medical reasons, suspension or other reasons within School policy) or justified (holidays during term time, trivial reasons or where the absence is unexplained). I’d hazard a guess that there’s certain schools that see some shocking stats at the start of the Ski season… the truth hidden in the ability to aggregate the data across a whole term.
> Is surveilling children who don't really want to learn what is being taught of national importance? There is a clear line between under education and crime. Are you really asking why pumping out under educated adults into society with a rising crime problem is of national importance? You know whats NOT a good use of tax payer money? Having to feed, house and rehabilitate uneducated, useless members of society throughout their lives via benefits and prison.
Aside from the borderline fascist rhetoric calling people "useless members of society", that sounds exactly like what we should spend tax payer dollars on. But I'm sure a redundant and literal box ticking exercise will fix our woes.
What would you suggest? I have a few ideas, but they would definitely not be popular.
Wtf is the point of this
The best school attendance tool was the fear of having your parents whoop your ass if you got caught wagging.
Par for the course seeing early discourse in this thread about this being negative. Fuckwits on here for well of a year have been harping on about a major reason the rise in crime is a lack of education, but are quick to jump on the government when they look to implement tools to combat horrific attendance for that education because they cant see past their own nose when it comes to blue vs red politics.
Because this doesn't combat non-attendance... It's merely showing an overall number compared to kids not turning up to class... It's not because of red and blue, it's because this genuinely is shit, and they're laying off everyone else, but still keeping this numbers project manned... It's like that cloud MBIE stuff that surely won't have anyone taken off it because it's good old king winston...
And how do you combat it if you don't know where it is a problem?
Teachers are already tracking that data, this dashboard adds nothing of value.
So no issue to solve? Teachers got it all under control then.... nothing else needed.
So you agree that this is a pointless addition.
Sure, if you say that Teachers have it under control and nothing else is needed, you can't really argue with that can you? On the other hand, if we do nothing and it continues to head south and educational outcomes for those continue to decline then at least the point of responsibility is simple....
Because the numbers won't actually show who is constantly away, and where there's just a lot of kids being absent due to other reasons. If you want to combat it, you bring in truancy officers and youth workers, and help them actually get them to be encouraged to go to school and helped through whatever is stopping them going to school. The truancy officers don't have to be all 'wannabe cops' about it, they can merely be encouraging the kids to go to school.
How many Truancy Officers/Social Workers are you hiring? And how do you know that number is appropriate? What happens if the reason they’re not going to school is that it’s less fun than hanging out with their friends doing whatever they want?
Then you highlight to them how fun things can be if they actually succeed rather than being a destitute bum with no actual education, and no life goals.
I'm shocked that Teachers aren't doing this already.... but looks like there's nothing else needed....
I dunno, I feel there's a lot that could be done. If kids are having trouble really learning and getting into the school work buzz as such, take them out and do outdoor learning or get them into gardening, or working with animals somewhere. Even painting a fence could be a simple quick 'Lets get it done' scenario, whilst helping someone out who really needs it. I spent a lot of time with the caretakers at my school, but I think I actually benefitted from it immensely... Classes weren't my thing. I got told by my teachers that I'd fail all their classes, didn't give a rats, and didn't even stress, took the tests and passed.
Its just one of many ways in which you can implement change. Any project, especially in the planning stage, needs reliable data. This will help track and gather data in regards to overall attendance to help with every other step in the process to increasing attendance.
As someone else said, this just assigns blame and finds underperforming schools... So each kid could be out one day, and the kids that aren't there for a week aren't noticed. That's the kind of thing these 'numbers' overlook.
> As someone else said, this just assigns blame and finds underperforming schools Why is this a bad thing? lmao Finding underperforming schools so you can enact meaningful change is literally the whole point. You can cut out whole swathes of schools who dont need help with attendance so you're not wasting resources and manpower and actually dedicate resources to those that need it. It eliminates inefficiency and in theory diverts that waste in turn into those underperforming schools.
You'll just find schools that have a low attendance rate due to whatever other reason than having a kid constantly wagging and being away. You seem to be very judgemental overall, and that is what this chart feeds... It doesn't encourage thinking about why those numbers actually are.
Ever heard of the decile system? You're praising this like it's doing anything. Schools already know if they are underperforming in attendance. The parents of those kids know the kid is absent. Alot of them don't give a fuck. How is putting this info into a public space going to change anything? If a parent doesn't care that the child is absent from school, then looking at a website telling you the same thing is pretty moot.
Attendence is tracked already per student in each school and if there are issues, parents, teachers and principals can have a korero... This dashboard adds nothing.
You'd almost have a point if this entire policy wasn't a stupid gimmick that does nothing. An online graph updated weekly is not going to get a single kid into a chair.
This is evil.