August 30, 2023 1:44pm by Alwyn Poole

Up on The Facts NZ yesterday:

15% of Kiwi kids now leaving school without any NCEA qualification

ALL • Education • Equality • Jobs

August 29, 2023

theFacts_95_School_Leavers_Data_Ministry_Of_Education_NCEA_Qualifications_Retention_Unitl_17_New_Zealand_2012_to_2022

KEY INSIGHTS
From the 2022 School Leavers data recently released:

15% left without any NCEA qualification (up 50% since 2017’s 10% figure)
- 25% left without getting NCEA Level 2 (not shown in graph above)
  - 48% (~1/2) left without getting NCEA Level 3 or UE (not shown in graph above)
21.5% left before turning 17-years-old (up 36% since 2017’s 15.8% figure)
- 33% more 16-year-olds left school
- 63% more 15-year-olds left school
  (data for 14-year-olds wasn’t provided)

KEY QUESTIONS

Are these declining retention and qualification metrics a concern? If so, how much? If not, why not?
How do we apportion the cause of these declining metrics between our:
1. Covid response
2. Education policies/governance
3. Teacher-only days/strikes
4. Cost of living pressures
5. Other social factors?
Can we determine from this data that National-led Governments outperform Labour-led Governments on education matters?
How do we improve these metrics again? (Assuming we want to.)

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HAVE YOUR SAY

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FULL DATA ANALYSIS
Please contact us if you would like the full data set and research.

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NOTES:

All publicly available years have been published. We have asked the Ministry of Education how to source data before 2012.
Multiple NCEA achievement levels could have been graphed.
- We choose to show the % of Kiwi kids who are leaving school without any NCEA qualification at all, as we felt that was the most important insight.
- In the insights section above, however, we have also showed the % not achieving NCEA Level 2 (widely considered to be the bare minimum needed when leaving school), and also the % not achieving NCEA Level 3 or UE (University Entrance).
17 years of age has long been considered the key retention age because, by law, 6-16 year-olds must be enrolled in school (there are some exceptions).
- In the insights section above, we have also shown the increase in 16 and 15-year-olds leaving school.
- There was no figure for 14-year-olds leaving school, but we have asked the Ministry of Education for that too.
We compared 2022 results to the 2017 year when National was last in power. Even though the 2017 election took place on the 23rd of September with a couple of months in the school year left to run, we felt it was fair to consider the 2017 education results as Nationals. The announcement of a Labour-NZ First coalition Government came on the 19th of October, almost a month after the election.
We reduced the vertical axis to a narrower range containing the data, because:
- Qualification and retention metrics are never close to 0%.
- This view helps us see the changes more easily.
- Small % shifts can have a significant impact on individual lives and social outcomes.
We have also included an inset image that shows the full 0-100% scale.
There are many variables that impact school retention and qualifications, including:
- Covid response/lockdowns
- Education policies/governance
- Teacher-only days/strikes
- School closure days, e.g. bad weather
- Cost of living pressures
- Other social factors
We chose blue for National-led governments and red for Labour-led governments, being their party colours.
We use the Covid yellow stripes to represent that period of lockdowns.
All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.