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

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August 29, 2023

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

  1. Are these declining retention and qualification metrics a concern? If so, how much? If not, why not?
  2. 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?
  3. Can we determine from this data that National-led Governments outperform Labour-led Governments on education matters?
  4. 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.

Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.

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SOURCES:

Data published by The Ministry of Education
(c) Crown Copyright
Licensed for use under the creative commons attribution licence (BY) 4.0

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