The level of disengagement with NZ State Education … even I am stunned.

There has been some digging going on with the level of disengagement with State schools in NZ.

Keeping it simple:

There are 826,347 school students in NZ.

10,500 of compulsory age have opted out to the point that they are not enrolled anywhere. (making it 836,857 who should be there).

33,053 are in Private Schools.

7,893 are home-schooling.

Only 68% are fully attending by Ministry data.

So we have around 299,000 students in NZ who have opted out of, or are significantly disengaged with the State school system. (i.e. above 35%)

In 2020 12% of our school leavers (7003 young people) left with no qualification. It was 23% for Maori and 4% for Asian students.

Asian students get UE at 70%, European at 47%, Pasifika at 27%, Maori at 23%.

Decile 1 school leavers have UE at 17.5%. Decile 10 school leavers have UE at 73%. (NB: when schools publish their qualifications statistics always make sure they are talking about school leavers and not their survivors – some schools have lost up to 40% of their students by 17yo – their Y13 NCEA stats do not reflect that important aspect.)

I need no further commentary than the Ministry of Education motto (on each letter and email).

“We shape an education system that delivers equitable and excellent outcomes.”

The government/Ministry is proposing nothing that will be effective at addressing this. The sound that you don’t hear right now is the incredibly incompetent and clueless leaders of our education bureaucracy taking responsibility for this genuine crises and resigning.

As just sent to me – among the social ills this all leads to – on the production side:

“I think you could argue this is fundamental to our poor productivity as a Nation. We:- work 17% harder- are 40% less productive- earn 30% less GDP/capita than our OCED comparators.”