The research presented in this paper comes out of a wider and on-going data-based project that is investigating areas where children and young people in New Zealand who are of compulsory school age may be ‘missing’ from the education sector and/or ‘missing out’ on their education or simply missing from the data, and whether those missing out are predominantly male. The research presented in this paper looked beyond the known truants in an attempt to find if data could be used to support the supposition that there may be truants who are unknown to the education sector. The method used comparisons between the populations of students of compulsory school age known to the domestic education sector and those in the estimated resident population. However, significant limitations to this method have been found, both because of structural differences between these two populations and trends found within the data. These limitations, and why they may exist, are a key focus of this paper.

Key words: estimated resident population, domestic education sector, truant