Western Bay of Plenty principals are questioning the government's truancy rate figures released this week, which show nearly 2000 students are truant in the region every day.
'We have to be very careful about what we are saying about these figures,” says Otumoetai College principal Dave Randall.

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He says his school does not have a truancy problem and questions whether the truancy figures from the government reflect the reality of truancy in the region.
During 10 weeks in 2009, Otumoetai College recorded 107 instances of suspected truancy.
But Dave says one student was absent 10 times over that period and others were found to be away on family holidays, some students had missed classes for valid reasons and many were away on school camps.
The school has a budget of $16,000 every year to tackle truancy, but Dave hopes that amount will double now that the government has announced it will inject an extra $4 million into truancy prevention.
Later this year the school will also introduce an electronic texting system, which automatically sends a text to parents if their children are recorded as absent from school.
A truancy officer also works in the school but is shared among Otumoetai Primary and Otumoetai Intermediate.
Bethlehem College principal Phillip Nash says his school does not have a truancy problem and their truancy rate is ‘negligible'.
'In some schools truancy is a major problem and they spend a lot of time and money on it – we do occasionally have truants.
'But sometimes it's related to the school's location, if a school is close to the city, where it's easy to escape. We are a bit more isolated.”
Phillip says the school does not have a truancy officer or an allocated budget to tackle it.
'The money should be targeted at schools that show they have a significant truancy problem. We don't expect to get any funding.”