By John Gerritsen of RNZ

How many students are wagging school?

Earlier this week National Party leader Christopher Luxon told Morning Report 100,000 children were chronically truant.

This is incorrect.

The figure he was referring to is from term 1 this year when 101,861 children were chronically absent - but not necessarily truant.

Children are chronically absent if they miss 30 percent or more of the half-days that schools were open in term 1 - essentially three weeks out of 10.

What is not clear is how many of those students had good reasons for missing school, such as being unwell or isolating because a member of their household had Covid-19.

That is because the figures about justified and unjustified absences are based on the number of half-days that students were absent, not on the students themselves.

However, the figures do show that most absences in term 1 were justified.

Students had justified absences for 9.1 per cent of the half-days in term 1, up from 4.3 per cent in the same period in 2019.

Unjustified absences spiked to 6.5 per cent of half-days, compared to 3.5 per cent in term 1 2019.

But only half of the unjustified absence figure was classed as truancy.

The 6.5 per cent was broken down to 3 per cent being "no information provided - truant [or throw away explanation]", 2.7 per cent "absent with an explained but unjustified reason", 0.3 holiday during term time, and 0.4 "unknown reason".

Meanwhile, separate figures show what percentage of children are turning up to school each day.

They show an average daily attendance rate of 76 per cent in term 1 and an average of 83 per cent so far in the current term, term 3.

None of these figures show how many children are considered chronically truant.