The Education Minister believes a million dollar school attendance campaign was money well spent

Last August, the Every School Day is a Big Day campaign was launched -- with the goal of encouraging kids back to class.

But, documents released under the Official Information Act show it was never expected to have a direct, quantifiable impact on attendance rates.

Jan Tinetti says the campaign was needed to increase awareness of the need to get students to school.

She says there were ERO statistics that showed 40 percent of parents didn't think kids going to school each day was important to achievement levels.