August 2, 2023 4:30pm by Alwyn Poole

In Education: Just how far and fast we are falling.

Background

In January/February of each year the NCEA/UE results get released for the students who sat in the previous year. For schools that keep the vast majority of their students until 17 years old – they are a reasonably accurate reflection of performance. For schools that lose many students prior to that those results are mythical. They only tell the stories of the survivors who have managed to stay until the qualifications years.

The best data set is the leavers results. Education Counts (the worthwhile arm of the ministry) have recently released the summary of NZ’s school leaver results. I am about to receive the raw data for the leavers results and destinations for every high school in NZ and in a few weeks will have my annual data process done to show – accurately – how every high school in NZ is actually doing.

The summary documents listed here are well worth a read: www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/school-leavers

A Summary of the Summary

Not being in employment, further education or training (NEET) affects around 30% of school leavers in the first year after they finish school, including almost 70% of leavers without a qualification and almost 50% of leavers with a Level 1 qualification.

In 2022 84.8% of all school leavers attained NCEA Level 1 or above. Compared to 2021, there was a 2.8 percentage point decrease in the proportion of school leavers with NCEA Level 1 or above. Attainment of NCEA Level 1 or above had been increasing between 2012 and 2017, since 2017 it has decreased 5.2 percentage points.

In 2022, 11,989 Māori school leavers (73.0%) attained NCEA Level 1 or above, a decrease of 3.6 percentage points from 2021.

In 2022, 48,344 school leavers attained NCEA Level 2 or above, equating to 75.0% of all school leavers. This is a 4.1 percentage point decrease from 2021 and a 4.9 percentage point decrease from 2019.

In 2022, 9,630 Māori school leavers attained NCEA Level 2 or above, equating to 58.6% of all Māori school leavers and a decrease of 5.1 percentage points from 2021. Between 2017 (when the rate was at its peak) and 2022, the proportion of Māori school leavers NCEA Level 2 or above decreased by 10.3 percentage points.

In 2022, 5,411 Māori school leavers attained NCEA Level 3 or above, equating to 32.9% of all Māori school leavers and a decrease of 4.4 percentage points from 2021.

In 2022, 51.8% of all school leavers achieved Level 3 or above, a 4.5 percentage point decrease from 2021.

In 2022, 38.0% of all school leavers attained UE Standard, a 3.4 percentage point decrease from 2021 (41.3%).In 2022, UE Standard was attained by 17.8% of Māori school leavers. For Asian leavers the UE rate was 62.5%. For Europeans 41.7%. For Pasifika students 20.7.

Of the 63,417 domestic students who left school in 2021, 59.3% enrolled in tertiary education during. This is down 5.6 percentage points from the 2020 leavers participating in tertiary in 2021.

A Summary of the Summary of the Summary

Chris Hipkins is, by a significant margin, the worst performing Minister of Education I have ever seen in 30 years in the sector.
Jan Tinetti could well be worse but jumped into the slide well after Hipkins started the flow and may not have time to catch up.
The long term consequences for the young people, their families, and NZ as a whole will be catastrophic.
Change from the new government cannot be tinkering.